A Second Chance in Paradise (15 page)

When we got to the bar the old man’s
face grew pale and the trenches in his forehead deepened as I told him about that madman, Brock Blackburn. Buster only told Pa that we had picked up a lead in Key West, and that he was almost certain Lionel Topper was involved. All he’d said other than that was that he wanted to investigate further to be sure.

“Are you sure
he didn’t say anything else?” I asked Pa, wondering if Buster told him that I’d backed out of helping him.

“
No, that was it.”

Relieved as all hell I then thought,
That Buster’s a pretty shrewd ole boy! I’ll bet he knew all along that I’d be with him. I never should have suspected he would tell anybody how I wiggled my way out of the jam last night. He’s got too much class for that
.

“
We’re going down to Stock Island, Pa. Blackburn lives there. That’s got to be where he went – either there or Hugs & Jugs. Come on, Julie. If you’re still going to insist on coming, let’s go!”

“
Hold on just a bit,” Pa said, holding his palm up like a traffic cop. “Wait here for a sec.”

He then
snatched a brown paper bag from behind the bar and hustled to his small office in back. Julie and I glanced at each other quizzically then I looked around the bar. Sweet Home Alabama was playing on the jukebox. The redhead from the supermarket was back with her friend. This time they were rapping away with four shrimpers in white rubber boots. That’s all I noticed because that quickly Pa came back out. Walking towards us, around the outside of the bar, he jerked his head at the door and said, “C’mon, outside.”

Another one of those fast moving Florida thunder storms
had moved in from the west, and it was beginning to come down pretty hard.

“
Take this,” Pa said, handing me the brown bag.

It was weighty. I looked inside and there was a handgun – a 38
caliber. Now holding the bag if it were contaminated, I felt my stomach tighten and my teeth clamp together.

“Sonny,” Pa said, “f
orget that you even have it. It’s only in case you get into a jam.”

The rain
started pouring down then. Heavy drops drummed on the roof of the building as I said, “Okay, Pa, you go back inside. We’re going to head down there. As soon as we get back we’ll let you know what we found out.”

“
Maybe we should drive by your house first,” Julie said hopefully. “Maybe he’s home now.”

“
Nah,” Pa said, shaking his head, rain dripping from his bushy white brows, “I called one last time when I went into the office for the piece. Still no answer.”

Julie and I bolted through the rain to my van. Once inside, both of us
soaked to the skin, I leaned over to deposit the firearm into a slide-out storage compartment beneath the passenger seat. As soon as Julie saw me leaning toward it, she quickly, reflexively, curled the remaining fingers of her hand into her palm. Little did she know that ever since we’d gotten back on good terms I’d been making a point of not looking at that hand.

Nasty lightening
– blinding cloud-to-ground strikes – snapped all around as we drove south through the now dark Keys. One time, just a hundred feet ahead on the road’s shoulder, a ball of fire exploded six feet above the grass. Its light, like a small explosion, brightly illuminated the green leaves of some mangrove trees.

Both of us flinching, I said, “Oh
shit!  Did you see that?”

“How could I not?
Look at that smoke where it hit.”

Th
e torrential rain made visibility almost non-existent. I tightened my damp grip on the wheel then leaned towards the windshield as a set of oncoming headlights approached. After they passed by us, I seriously considered pulling onto the road shoulder and waiting for the storm to pass. But I didn’t. We needed to get where we were going pronto, even though it was impossible to drive faster than twenty-five miles per hour. As I plowed on into the storm and darkness, Julie and I were too deep in our own disturbing thoughts to say much. The few times we did talk it was in a rat-a-tat-tat, rapid-fire exchange of nervous words. By the time we approached the Boca Chica Channel Bridge neither of us had uttered a single word for at least ten minutes, or so it seemed. But, just as we drove onto the structure, we finally came out of the rain and Julie broke that silence.

“
God,” she said, turning her face toward me, “Buster better be alright. He doesn’t deserve any of this crap.”

“No he doesn’t.
I don’t know if we’re going to find him down here, but I just feel like we have to keep moving, looking – doing something. There was no way I was going to just sit around Wrecker’s and wait.”

With the rain behind us now and the roads dry we got to Hugs and Jugs in no time. Slowly we motored through several rows of parked
cars and pickups, my eyes flicking back and forth at each and every one of them. After checking out the main parking area in front of the dive, I had to stop short for two men. Seemingly appearing out of nowhere, they swayed and stumbled their way through the beams of my headlights. Now they were in no hurry. Both of them dressed in grungy work uniforms they then stopped for a moment – right smack in front of my van. All lit up now, in more ways than one, they each took a slug from the same bottle of cheap rum. One said something; they laughed hysterically, patted each other’s back, slipped fives, and only then finally headed for the doorway again. They didn’t know we existed. Julie and I just shook our heads as I steered around to the side of the building. Buster’s truck wasn’t there either. Neither was Topper’s Benz nor Blackburn’s burgundy beater.

A
s soon as I turned back onto the boulevard I glanced at Julie. Still silent, her distraught face was lit a surreal pink from the giant neon dancer on the sign to her right. I was even sorrier now that I had allowed her to come along. I hated the idea of bringing her to where I had to go next.

“
I knew that would be too easy,” I said as we picked up speed. “Now there’s no choice. As much as I hate to we’ve
got
to go Stock Island and look around there.”

Buster had told me there were some really trashy
trailer parks on Stock Island. And that he’d bet anything Blackburn was holed up in one of them. He also said a couple of those parks were so nasty that even the local police made every possible effort to avoid them at night.

A
few blocks past the “Purple Conch” – that sleazy saloon Buster had pointed out to me the night before, we came up on a rundown trailer park. When we reached the far end of it, I turned right off of US 1 then made another right onto the first narrow, unlit street running through the park. I did not want to be where I was, particularly with Julie sitting alongside me. I deeply regretted caving into her. When she had insisted on coming with me at the bar, I should have put my foot down. I should have said no.

With the van’s windows wide open, I slowly drove through a tight maze of small,
rickety trailers. Most had lights on and windows open. Here and there, a few of the more fortunate residents had small air-conditioners jutting from their windows.

“
We’re looking for a ’67 or ‘68 Chevy pickup, burgundy,” I said, as I carefully steered between two tight rows of time-worn jalopies. “Do you know what they look like?”

“Not really, but I’ll know what an old burgundy pickup looks like when I see one.”

“Good point. I’m sorry  ...  I’m just a little uptight is all.”

“
Oh, Sonny, I’m scared sick for Buster.”

“
I don’t like the smell of things either, but let’s not let our minds run away with themselves right now. The first thing we have to do is try to  ... ” Right then my mouth suddenly froze and I stopped talking midsentence. I noticed something in the conical beam of my headlights. It was down at the end of the road – parked on a cross street – the side of a pickup truck. Still saying nothing, I craned my neck forward toward the windshield. My heart started thumping uncontrollably. I thought it would bust through my rib cage. I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples as well.

“What is it?” Julie blurted in a tone jolting with concern. “What in hell’s the matter?”

It was a red pickup, and definitely a Ford.

Immediately I stomped down on the gas pedal and the words gushed out of me.

“UP AHEAD – IT’S BUSTER’S TRUCK!”

With h
ot adrenalin flooding my arms, I jockeyed through the passageway of cars faster than the most reckless of New York taxi drivers.

Buster
’s pickup was parked perpendicular to the road, on a grassy shoulder skirting a canal. It was desolate back there, and both doors were wide open. The rays from the van’s headlights shone clear through the empty cab, penetrating the haunting mangroves behind it and settling on the pitch-black water.

I killed the lights, yanked the steering wheel hard to the
left and pulled onto the grass in front of the truck.

“
Hand me that gun, Julie!” I said, slamming the gearshift into park before killing the engine.

“
I don’t like this one bit!” she said as she bent over and carefully fished the loaded gun out of the storage compartment behind her feet.

“
Not now, Julie!” I demanded in a loud, no-nonsense whisper.

Fully extending her arm, she held the h
eavy paper bag out as if it were a bomb that could go off at any second.

“
See if there’s a flashlight in there too,” I whispered in a lower tone now as my eyes searched beneath the moonlit trees outside the van.

Julie quickly
sifted through road maps, spare fuses, an owner’s manual and whatever else I had in there before coming up with the flashlight. She turned it on, but it was a no go.

“
Let me see it,” I said.

With shaky hands I
unscrewed the lens and rearranged the batteries – still nothing. I gave it a couple of quick raps on my open hand but that didn’t get it to work either. Dropping the useless thing headfirst into a drink holder between the seats, I said, “Come on!”

We dashed through the weeds and sandspurs over to Buster’s truck. I put my hand on its
hood – still warm. It hadn’t been parked there long.

“
Oh God! Blood!” Julie yelped, as she touched a dark, wet steak on the vinyl passenger seat.

“
Shhh!” I said, switching off the safety on the Smith and Wesson.

Other than
the muffled sound of a television coming from one of the trailers back up the road, the only thing audible was the faint buzz of a revved up outboard somewhere out on the dark channel. An outsized full moon helped us see through the tangles of branches and mangrove roots – out to a narrow strip of shoreline along the water. The damned no-see-ums were everywhere. Continually swatting at a cloud of them in front of my perspiring face, I pushed through the mangroves to the shoreline. Julie was right behind me.

We’d only taken a few steps along the water’s edge when she
tapped me firmly on the shoulder, twice. As I stopped and turned to her, she raised an index finger said in a spooked whisper, “Listen. What’s that?’”

There was an ever-so-slight rustling
in the mangroves. It only lasted a second or two and then it stopped. Standing dead still with our eyes locked on each other’s, we strained to hear.

“Maybe
a raccoon or something,” I said in a hushed voice.

“
Shhh! I don’t think so!”

Then we
heard something else – a weak, barely-distinguishable wheeze.

Then it ceased.

Julie’s eyes were open so wide now I could see the moon’s reflection in them. Brushing her back gently with one arm, I drew the 38 and pointed it at whatever was in there. We took a couple of tentative steps back into the mangrove trees, and then we saw it! A man was lying in there, among the countless long, airborne roots that had been exposed by the receded tide. He was big man, a big
motionless
man, and he was flat on his back in the darkness.

Moving
forward one more step, holding onto a thick limb with one hand for support, I aimed the shaking pistol at the body just in case. Closer now, my eyes focused better, I could see long damp tangles of hair lying over his face. The wet locks were peppered with sand, and they were
blond
.

“My good god
!” I cried out as if in excruciating pain, “Noooo! It’s Buster!”

Chapter 16

Buster’s lips were slightly parted. Rivulets of blood crawled from the corners of his mouth down both sides of his chin. His eyes were swollen shut.

I quickly bent over and
pressed my trembling fingertips firmly on his neck. No pulse – nothing!  I pushed harder, feeling around for his jugular. And then, when I had just about lost hope, I did found a pulse. It was ever so weak, but it
was
there.