Once he’d changed and transferred Matty’s finger to his new pants pocket, Martin had pulled over and let Gary toss the filthy old clothes into a dumpster. Frankie was the more outgoing of the couple. He turned his captain’s chair all the way around to engage Gary, who was sipping a cup of wonderful green tea with honey and some other secret ingredient that Frankie would not divulge, in what could only be called delightful conversation. Every so often, Frankie would try to include Martin.
“Isn’t that so, Marty?” he’d ask his partner, who had obviously tuned them out.
Martin would smile and wink at Frankie. “It is, my dear.”
“So, is there a shelter or somewhere we can take you, Gary?” Frankie asked after a time.
“Oh, no,” Gary said, finishing off his tea. “I’m not homeless. I just lost my ride.”
Martin turned to look over his shoulder at Gary. “Yeah, and I’m Saul Morganstern.”
Gary did not know who Saul Morganstern was, but chose not to make an issue of it. “No, really. I have an apartment, back on Upper Matecumbe.”
“That’s north, right?” Frankie asked, laying a soft hand on his knee. “Marty, we’ve got to turn around. The least we can do is give this young man a ride back to his place, right?”
“It is, my dear,” Martin said, slowing and guiding the Winnebago into a wide arcing u-turn.
“Thank you so much,” Gary said. “When we get to my place, I can get you some money.”
“Absolutely not!” the two men said in unison. “A friend in need is a friend indeed. You just remember us and when you pass this on to the next poor soul, you tell them Uncle Marty and Aunt Frankie send their regards.”
“Oh, so I’m the woman now, eh?” Frankie asked over a mischievous smile.
Martin only winked in reply.
“So,” Gary said, hoping to interrupt the obvious flirting, “what brings the two of you to Islamorada?”
“We’re just passing through,” Martin said.
“It’s an annual thing for us,” Frankie added. “We have a German friend on Key West with a charming little place on Eaton. He goes back to the homeland to visit family and we take up residence to house sit for him.”
“Very nice,” Gary said.
“Mmhmm,” Frankie agreed, licking his lips. “And we live the Conch life all the way through Fantasy Fest one street over from Duval.”
“Sounds delightful.”
Frankie’s mouth dropped open and he turned to look at his partner. “Marty, we absolutely must host our new friend for the parade, don’t you think? We have that futon in the living room that makes a surprisingly comfortable bed. Isn’t that right?”
“It is, my dear.”
And so the plans were made rumbling down the highway in the pouring rain. Plans that would never come to fruition.
36
Gator Crossing
Dante Caparelli cursed his inability to keep the car in between the lines demarking the proper lanes on the Overseas Highway. His palms were as sweaty as a pimple-faced kid asking his crush to the Junior Prom. It also didn’t help that he could barely see past the end of the long, black hood. Nor did it help that his windshield wipers were older than his son would’ve been today. And the fact that one of his headlights was out made the whole thing an experiment in thrill-seeking. He glanced in the rearview mirror, still no sign of the overzealous cop or the cowboy. That eased his mind, but not his crotch.
All of this evening's stress behind the wheel, plus his oversized prostate and a combination of stronger-than-necessary alpha blockers had his bladder on full. He imagined it looked like a distended water balloon in the hands of a teenager hell bent on filling it with as much liquid as possible without popping it. Through the smear of his windshield, he saw yellow and white LED lights hazing into view ahead. As he got closer, he could see it was Dion's Quik Mart. He’d been here on one or two occasions when a rich—and gullible—customer ordered some kind of fancy-schmancy beer they didn’t have on tap.
With his eyes directed at the glowing sign above the station, Dante turned a little too soon and hit the curb leading into the parking lot hard. A squirt of urine shot out of him like a water pistol and he squeezed his thighs together tightly to staunch the flow. He wasn’t fully sure he’d be able to stand up out of the car without another trickle escaping. His doctor had warned him if he held it in on too many occasions, he would risk losing more and more control over his urethra.
He glanced down at the gas gauge and decided he’d empty one tank and fill another while he was here. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure of two things: Did Dion’s have a public restroom? And did he remember how to pump gas?
Either way, he was gonna take a piss whether it be in a toilet or behind the building against the cinder block exterior of the Quik Mart. The gas, he figured, was like makin’ love—and he’d always been a champion in the sack, at least up until he married his fourth wife, Jackie, Matty’s mother.
He pulled his car close to pump number one, the other one was busted up like a repo man had gotten a hold of it. He jumped out of the car, clenching everything below his waist as tight as he could. He tiptoe-sprinted around the building and found a door with a gender-neutral bathroom icon. Under that, in black marker, the next Will Shakespeare had scrawled, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, hate me because I did your dad.” And then, in another, darker, handwriting, “Go home, mom. You’re drunk.”
Dante had seen more than his share of stall jokes, and he wouldn’t have read it, except for the fact that the door was locked with a large Stanley padlock. He tugged on it a couple of times, swearing at it in Italian. He considered just emptying his bladder all over the door, but then caught sight of a camera—probably fake—above the door, just out of reach.
He swore again and hopped back around the building to the front door. It was locked as well, but with a couple of hard shakes, the bolt let go and the door swung open. Without waiting to locate the clerk, he called into the air, “Yo, I need the bathroom key.”
Nothing. The only sound was a low, steady hum emanating from the fanciest beer cave he’d ever seen in the Keys and a buzz coming out of the fluorescent lights above him. “Hey, anybody here? I gotta take a leak.”
He walked behind the counter and rifled through the envelopes, receipts, assorted pens, toothpicks, and personal adult items that couldn’t be kept in plain view. There was no sign of the key, but there was a medium sized crowbar with the words, “Theft Deterrent,” written on the side. With the bar in his left hand, Dante took two steps from behind the counter, then looked at the register. He glanced around the store, now absolutely certain that no one was here, and then back at the silent checkout counter. With the crowbar, he could be in the cash drawer in seconds, but what was he, a petty thief? He decided he wasn’t going to do that. He did help himself to a handful of the cheap cigarillos with the plastic tips on them. Above his head, a similar camera dome eyeballed him until he swung the bar up and smashed it open. As he suspected, the smoky glass only concealed the fact that there was no camera hidden behind it. He could’ve just pissed on the door and been done with the whole affair—which reminded him that he still needed to go and bad.
An electronic chime startled Dante and he looked up to see a soaking wet man leaning a green bicycle up against the outside of the building. He thought he recognized the man dressed in a pink Ralph Lauren polo, pale stone shorts, and Sperry Docksider shoes, but even when the man walked through the door, he couldn’t place where he knew him. Later, it would come to him that this was the reporter who had written an exposé on Woody’s and how it was in danger of becoming a mafia hornet’s nest. But without realizing this fact, he simply held up his prize of Swisher Sweets and said, “Have at it, young man. Looks like it’s a free day. No staff.”
The man, who looked as if he’d spent a few nights outside, sleeping on a park bench, eating from a dumpster, launched into a tirade about the “whole degenerate attitude becoming more and more
pervasive in the Keys. They oughta burn the whole thing down to the ground and start over.”
Dante stuffed the miniature cigars in his shirt pocket and said, “suit yourself ass-wipe.”
He brushed past the ornery bicyclist and headed around back to take care of business.
Troy watched in slow-motion horror as Ian Bass barreled at high speed—almost sixty miles an hour, which qualifies as insanely fast in the Keys—toward the log-shaped creature trudging across the Overseas Highway. Water and muck dripped from the ancient beast’s limbs and body as its eyes glinted deep and black in the after storm mist rising from the asphalt. Apparently, his faculty for speech was momentarily frozen, so he reached up and banged on the cage separating him from FDLE Officer Ian Bass in the front seat. This turned out to be a mistake as Ian had yet to see the massive alligator crossing the road and looked over his shoulder to see what all the fuss Troy was making was about.
If they had been in a normal police cruiser, the front bumper might have pushed the gator for a bit giving it a fighting chance. As it was, the Islamorada Sheriff Department’s prized Ford Explorer, confiscated from a Tavernier drug bust last summer, sat approximately twelve inches off the ground. Troy guessed it must have about a six inch lift kit on it and some of the biggest off-road wheels he’d ever seen on an Explorer. It was high enough that the rambling creature served as a perfect ramp. They launched the SUV up and over it like the black and gold Pontiac Trans Am Burt Reynolds had sailed over the collapsed bridge to escape Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit.
If Troy had been able to roll down his window, he might, under any other circumstances, be led to belt out a good old fashioned, “yeehaw.” But his love for animals, even the sharp toothed ones, filled him with instant concern and dread for the alligator. Ian’s driving was expert, though. They hit the ground and bounced with a skid. The Explorer jerked to the right and swerved to a stop so sudden, Troy thought they might flip. In fact, the passenger’s side wheels lifted off the ground for a second, then slammed back down.
Ian looked through the cage into the back seat. “You okay back there?”
Troy pulled himself up out of the floorboard. “I’m alright, partner. Just a little shook up is all.”
He picked up his tumbled cowboy hat and placed it back on his head, scooting toward the window to see what had become of the gator. It lay in the middle of the road, upside down. It’s body appeared to be intact, but from this distance, Troy couldn’t see if it was still breathing.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Go?” Ian asked. “Go where?”
“We gotta go back and check on him.”
“Looks like a female,” Ian said, peering into the steam. “And we’ve got more important things to do right now.”
Troy didn’t ask how the man could tell it was a female, but figured he was probably right. It was probably out hunting for food. Might have babies nearby.
“But she could be—”
“Could be dead,” the police officer interrupted him, “or could be alive. There’s nothing you or I can do for it in any case. And the longer we mess around here, the farther away Dante gets.”
Ian put the SUV in gear. Troy pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through to a browser. He began to peck out a search for animal control.
“Yo, cowboy,” Ian said, his tone suddenly gruff. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Callin’ it in,” Troy said with a shrug. “I’ll give ’em a mile marker and they can come check her out and see if she’s—”
Troy was stopped short by the black hole of a gun pointed at his face.
“Sorry, man,” Ian said. “I can’t let you do that.”
The FDLE gave some nearly incomprehensible reason concerning the department horning in on his case, but Troy wasn’t listening. He was trying to connect the call without looking down at his phone. He punched the button and it started ringing.
The window next to him buzzed and rolled down a few inches. “Toss it,” Ian said, jerking his head toward the opening.
“But, I just got this one. It’s a—”
“Now,” Ian Bass said, jabbing his pistol into the cage, causing it to rattle.
Troy glanced down to see that his call hadn’t gone through. He took a deep breath and hurled the phone out, watching it bounce and splinter across the pavement. Ian holstered his gun and eased the Explorer back toward the road.
“It’s probably dead anyway, Troy,” he said as they headed into the night after Dante.
Neither of them saw the alligator begin to stretch its legs.
37
Guns And Ammo
The Islamorada Sheriff’s Department, formally, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office - Islamorada Substation, occupied a modern-yet-quaint stucco building with two stories of square windows looking into the lobby. As Cinnamon and Katerina pulled in, the parking lot was empty except for a single white Ford Taurus cruiser and a pink moped propped against the side of the building. The side of the police car was emblazoned with a wide forest green band outlined with yellow stripes and a star shining at the front end. A giant American flag flapped in the heavy, moist air, a single amber bulb beaming up at it.
Just beyond the glass doors, Cinnamon could see a receptionist—probably the moped driver—sitting at a desk running a file over her nails, smacking an unfortunate piece of gum, and blabbing away into a wire headset. Behind her, she could see a couple more desks, all vacant. To the left, down a short marble-floored hall, she could see a door proclaiming: Sheriff Paul S. Puckett, Jr.
She shoved through the front doors with Katerina shuffling along behind her. The girl at the desk didn’t look up. She kept talking to whomever was on the other end of the call. Cinnamon crossed her arms and waited. No effect. Ximena Suarez—as declared on her nameplate—continued to chat with her friend, pulled out a bottle of nail polish, and proceeded to paint her nails.
Katerina pushed forward and said, “What is the meaning of this? We have been waiting here for over five minutes. We have emergency and need to speak to—”
Cinnamon didn’t wait to hear the rest, she just walked around Ximena’s desk and headed down the hall towards the sheriff’s office. The girl jumped up, walked three steps in an odd looking duck waddle, her legs wrapped in a tight pencil skirt. The headset snapped her head back, she reached out her hand toward Cinnamon like a swimmer caught in a riptide.
“No, no, no,” she wailed. “You cannot just barge in back there.”
Cinnamon turned around and said, “We need to see the sheriff.”
“But you need an appointment,” the receptionist whined.
At that moment, she caught a glimpse of her nails. Apparently, she must have marred the finish on one of her fingers. She pulled it back in to examine it.
“Oh, geez,” she whined. “Look what you made me do. This particular shade of Killer Coral is perfect for my Fantasy Fest outfit and you ruined it.”
Cinnamon felt her mouth drop open in awe at the girl. “Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but Fantasy Fest isn’t for a few weeks, right?”
The left side of Ximena’s mouth jumped up into a knowing smirk. “Girl, you gotta test the color first. You never know how it's gonna look on your nails until you put it on.”
Cinnamon shook her head, trying desperately to think of a sensible reply to this, but came up with nothing.
Luckily, Ximena, now full on grinning at her nails, had something to add. “But I don’t know. I am in love with this color. If it doesn’t match perfectly, I think I’ll just buy a new dress.”
“Okay, thank you, lady,” Katerina said, jumping in. “Can you tell the sheriff we are here now and we need to see him?”
Ximena made a show of squeezing back into her chair and shuffling the pages of her calendar—which Cinnamon could see were ninety percent blank.
“Yeah, sure,” she said, smiling up at them. “He doesn’t have anything on his schedule until nine o’clock. That�
��s when Matlock comes on.”
Ximena picked up her phone to buzz the sheriff, but Cinnamon didn’t wait for the formality. She grabbed Katerina by the elbow and pulled her down the hall.
The frosted glass door swung open a little too fast and banged noisily against the wall. Behind a steel desk that might have come from a thrift shop, sat a pudgy man with pink jowls and thin white hair. He wasn’t old, but he wasn’t that young either. Cinnamon couldn’t decide whether his tan was sprayed on or earned on a fishing boat. Either way, he was ruddy, but not altogether unhandsome.
There were a dozen photographs, varying in age, of the man sitting at the desk, shaking hands with people Cinnamon guessed were politicians. She had never taken any interest in politics, but she could almost smell the heavy cologne and illicit money wafting from the pictures.
A scarecrow of a coat rack stood in the corner with a wide-brimmed, olive-colored hat with a black band holding a gold badge on the front. Below that, a black umbrella poked up looking very much like it hadn’t been outside in the rain in months. Cinnamon wondered how the man had patrolled the island without it the last few wet days.
In the few seconds before he noticed them, she saw the man was studying a Shots and Shells magazine. A woman with impossibly large boobs, wearing an impossibly small bikini, holding an impossibly big rifle, posed on the front in what could only be described as a tantric position with her gun. Must be the swimsuit issue, Cinnamon thought. Guns and sex and probably a lot of stories defending the Second Amendment—a testosterone pumping mixture for sure.
The man finally noticed them and jumped like he’d been shocked with a defibrillator. His chair nearly toppled as he slapped the pages of the magazine shut and shoved it into his desk drawer.
“How did you ladies get in here?” he demanded, looking over their shoulders toward his office door. “You can’t just barge in here like that.”
Gator Wave Page 18