Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (118 page)

It was a major firefight in less than a minute. The Americans were outmanned and outgunned, and their ammo was almost gone. But Tex and Lech had the Serb cops in an L-shaped ambush as they came out the next doorway. Two civilians and two thugs died in the initial encounter,
and the others dove for cover. The jeeps were useless in the tight city street, but one of the thugs had a grenade launcher and he fired it into the stairwell where Lech was positioned. Lech dove at the last second, but he lost his gun and had to crawl from the rubble. The thugs slipped out Lech’s end of the ambush and headed for an alley.

Marlon, Hank, François and Roosevelt ran out of the same alley, right into the thugs. Hank was first on the draw, killing a Serb with his sidearm. After that, both groups fled for opposite sides of the street, exchanging wild gunfire as they went. It was happening in seconds. The Serbs made it around the corner of a building; the Americans dove behind the abandoned stands of an outdoor vegetable market, but Marlon wrenched his ankle and fell short of cover.

Roosevelt ran back to get Marlon and threw him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He was almost back to safety when three bullets slammed into his back. In a last effort that came from nowhere, Roosevelt threw Marlon over the side of a vegetable stand before falling dead outside.

The remaining three were pinned down and taking heavy fire. The wood was no protection. A round splintered through and hit Hank in his shooting hand.

From Lech’s position in a doorway up the street, he saw the thug with the grenade launcher across the road, aiming for the vegetable stands. Lech looked around quickly—still no sign of his gun. He jumped up and sprinted. The Serb saw him at the last moment and turned, but Lech tackled him and they went down with the launcher, blowing them both up.

At the other end of the street, the thugs who had made it around the corner of the building were preparing a sec
ond launcher. Tex was upstairs over a bombed-out bakery. From a window, he saw the grenade launcher at the corner. Across the road, the three Americans were still pinned behind the vegetable stands. Jackson padded down the stairs and ran across the street to the thugs’ blind side.

Through a slat in a vegetable stand, Marlon could see it coming together. To their left, the barrel of the grenade launcher poking around the corner. To their right, Tex running full gait, quietly gliding tightly against the front of the buildings. Five strides away, Tex pulled the pin on a hand grenade. He ran right up to the corner.

The thugs were ready to fire the launcher when Tex’s hand appeared at the edge of the building, just below the barrel of the launcher, dropping the grenade at their feet. One of the thugs jumped into the open and got off a quick carbine burst at the fleeing Jackson before the grenade blew off his legs and killed the other two.

Up the street, Tex fell.

IT
was quiet. Eight bodies in the road. All over in five minutes. Marlon ignored his bad ankle and limped to Tex. Jackson was conscious, but he’d already bled a small pond. He labored for breath. “Go see my family—” He wanted to say something else, but died quickly.

Marlon sagged and closed his eyes and began crying softly.

Suddenly, the door of the building in front of Marlon burst open. Screaming people of all sizes spilled out. Marlon stood up. A family surrounded him and clung to his uniform, begging. Three old women, an old man and two children. All the men of fighting age had been taken off and executed months ago.

Walking out of the building behind the family were seven smiling Serb police officers with rifles. The one with the biggest smile had a tiny cigar in his mouth and a potbelly, and he’d been waiting for this day his whole life. He had spent twelve petty years on the police force bullying his neighbors, and now that he was operating under the wink of the Serb army, had graduated to torturing and murdering them with relish.

When the Serbs stepped out of the doorway and into the street, the family cowered behind Marlon. The children clung to his legs. An old woman in a shawl wept and cursed the cops.

The cops lowered the rifles to their sides and began laughing. The one with the potbelly mocked the old woman.

Marlon felt one of the children on his leg quivering. He looked over to where Tex lay. He slowly turned back to face the Serbs, straightening his spine and lifting his chin. He took his .45 pistol out of its hip holster and raised it at Potbelly with a fully extended right arm that was shaking.

A Swiss photographer for Reuters was hiding in a church steeple down the street and took a sequence of motor-drive zoom shots with a six-hundred-millimeter lens.

Potbelly pointed at Marlon and laughed and said with an accent, “John Wayne!”

The others broke up, too. But eventually they tired of laughing, and Marlon saw their eyes become vacant. They began raising the rifles.

There was this sound. The cops looked around. A deep drone rolling in from the hills. The swooping Lockheed suddenly appeared just above the building tops, and there was no place to hide. The .50-caliber cannons cut them to
pieces where they stood. The strike was surgical—barely any dust kicked up on Marlon or the family.

When the rescue team landed the helicopter ten minutes later, Marlon was sitting in the middle of the road, holding Tex’s hand.

RED-WHITE-AND-BLUE
streamers filled the terminal at Tallahassee Municipal Airport. Out on the runway, banks of TV cameras stood three deep atop a temporary stage. A red carpet led across the tarmac to an empty podium decorated with yellow ribbons.

“There it is!” someone yelled and pointed, and everyone looked skyward.

First it was a dot. Then General Nimitz’s plane grew larger until it made the approach and landed on runway nine.

Marlon was coming home a national hero. The Reuters photographs had appeared on the covers of both
Time
and
Newsweek
, Marlon aiming his pistol with his right hand, his left arm swept back behind him protecting the family, facing down seven armed Serbs. And the perfect tearjerker detail: the smudge-faced three-year-old girl peeking out from behind Marlon’s leg.

“That kid alone’s worth five elections,” Governor Birch had said privately.

There was even talk of the presidency. Birch would soon begin hearing rumors that he would be pushed aside for Marlon to make an early run, and it would worry Birch right up until he crashed into the Yukon in a Learjet full of hookers and moose guns.

But on this sunny day in the panhandle, all was right with the world. When the hatch opened, General Nimitz
appeared and waved for an inappropriate duration until his aides nudged him down the steps. Then came what the crowd had been waiting for. Marlon appeared first, then Bordeaux and Fulbright, whose arm was in a sling. They walked down the stairs as the tuba section of a local high school band played “War, What Is It Good For?” and orange-spandex nymphs threw batons high in the air.

The three returning soldiers were led toward the podium in front of a row of folding VIP chairs. General Nimitz was seated in the first chair, and a nymph’s errant baton throw came down above his right eye, requiring a fuss and butterfly closures.

Conrad, Fulbright and Bordeaux waved again when they got to the microphone. The applause seemed to go on forever.

Governor Birch approached Escrow. He canted his head toward Fulbright and Bordeaux. “Get them out of here!”

As the applause petered off, Escrow grabbed the two by the arms and led them over to a pair of chairs hidden behind a giant wreath that read, “Welcome home, Marlon.” He handed them single-serving bags of Ruffles.

Marlon looked out across the panorama of admiring faces. He had been here before—the night he won the lieutenant governor’s race, balloons dropping from the ballroom ceiling. He smiled sheepishly and waited for the last few people to stop clapping.

“I…”

Marlon stopped. He looked around for Fulbright and Bordeaux and spotted them behind the wreath. He paused, then faced the crowd again.

“I want to thank…” He turned and gestured toward the VIP seats, where Governor Birch and his father were seated. He stopped again.

Marlon took a deep breath. “I want to talk today about a man I met. He was a sergeant…”

“Oh, Jesus,” Dempsey Conrad whispered out the corner of his mouth to Birch. “Here we go.”

Marlon stopped again. He scanned the faces in the crowd. Each pause was growing more uncomfortable. Marlon lowered his head and bit his lower lip. The crowd began to murmur.

“We love you, Marlon!” yelled a woman in back, which produced sprinkled applause and a blast from a hockey arena air horn. Marlon’s eyes stayed lowered.

Governor Birch rushed to the podium and put a buddy arm around Marlon’s shoulders. He leaned to the microphone. “We’re so proud to have you home, Marlon!” Birch stepped back and began clapping, and the crowd came to its feet for a standing ovation.

They got Marlon in the limo quickly. Birch slipped Escrow a hundred. “Take him out and get him drunk.”

The crowd broke through the police line and chased Marlon’s limo down the runway.

THE
next morning, Escrow appeared with his clipboard in the doorway of the lieutenant governor’s office.

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” said Marlon, tucking a cell phone in a stuffed gym bag, looking around to see if there was anything else he might want.

“I hope you’re not packing for a trip.”

Silence.

“You can’t go anywhere! You have a month of appointments stacked up!”

Marlon zipped the gym bag—“Please move”—and squeezed past Escrow in the doorway.

Escrow scampered alongside him through the rotunda. “At least tell me where you’re going.”

Marlon kept walking.

“Okay, if you won’t tell me, I must insist that I come with you. You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.”

They left the Capitol for a limo waiting at the curb. As they pulled away, Escrow reached into Marlon’s gym bag on the backseat between them and pulled out the cell phone.

“I have to call your dad and the governor. This is highly irregular.”

Marlon’s voice was tired. “Don’t mess with me today.”

Escrow stopped mid-dial and looked at Marlon. He quietly put the phone back in the bag and started tapping his fingers on his knees. A minute passed. “Okay, I put the phone away. Now, will you tell me where we’re going?”

“Clewiston.”

“Clewiston! That’s eight hours!”

“Nine.”

For nine hours they drove. Marlon leaned forward and stared out the window the whole time, not saying a word. Escrow fidgeted.

They pulled off Interstate 75 south of Sarasota, and Marlon went into a convenience store. Escrow watched from the limo, then he grabbed the cell phone and quickly dialed.

“Clewiston!” yelled Birch. “Bring him back! Now!”

“I’m afraid of him—he’s not right.”

“Of course he’s not right! Something happened to him over there!”

“Can’t you send people?”

“Messy. It’ll get press. You have to bring him in alone.
You’re
his chief of staff!”

“I think he’s in search of something.”

“Great! The future governor is trying to find himself. Sets a dangerous precedent for the citizens.”

“But maybe it would be good for him to—”

“No buts! We don’t want people to find themselves! We like ’em just the way they are! Bring him back or you’re through in this town!”

The line went dead. Escrow saw Marlon coming out of the food mart with snacks, and he stuffed the cell phone back in the bag.

They headed inland, taking Route 74 at Punta Gorda. Marlon ripped open a foil pouch and offered it to Escrow.

“Bugle?”

Escrow shook his head. Marlon shrugged and looked back out the window and ate salty conical corn snacks.

They picked up US 27 and were soon deep in sugarcane country. Belle Glade, Moore Haven, Harlem and, later, Clewiston, “America’s Sweetest Town.” Raised causeways of packed dirt ran next to deep canals, cane fields sprawled in grids, and twisting trails of refinery smoke dotted the horizon. A sign thanked a doctor for returning to practice in the town.

“Pull over here,” Marlon told the driver.

The limo eased off the road south of Palmdale, at the Cypress Knee Museum. Marlon had hoped to get a burger, but the place was deserted. A new Florida institution—the ghost roadside attraction. Marlon read a faded wooden info sign about cypress knees, the knotted roots that stick out of the swamp so the trees can breathe. He walked through the covered outdoor exhibit and contemplated. There was a yellow photo from the fifties, when the place was hopping, and another of the late owner,
who collected pieces of cypress that had grown to resemble stuff. Marlon wiped dust off the display glass and saw dolphins, FDR, Stalin, Madonna and one knee with a Salvador Dalí title,
Lady Hippopotamus Wearing a Carmen Miranda Hat
. He learned that the museum’s founder, Tom Gaskins, Sr., displayed knees in the Florida Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Escrow. “This is spooky.”

They got back in the limo and crossed the Caloosahatchee Canal and drove along the berm of Lake Okeechobee. Their driver left the main road, taking lefts and rights through a humble residential section, and the homes looked worse and worse.

The driver found the name Jackson on the mailbox, and he turned up a dirt road to a small clapboard house. They were already on the porch, a dozen of ’em. Marlon felt sick. He knew Tex wasn’t rich, but he didn’t expect
this
. His widow, Inez, came forward and shook his hand.

“Our family is honored you’ve come. He wrote about you.”

Marlon couldn’t help but ask. “Are all these Tex’s?”

“No, two are sons-in-law and three are grandkids. Our oldest two live with their own families up the street.”

Marlon ran it through his mind:
Tex was a grandfather
.

They came off the porch in a line. They all said “sir” and shook his hand.

Inez took him into the living room. Marlon accepted a seat on the couch and sweetened iced tea and listened. Every Jackson had lived within a mile of that house for eighty years, ever since they started diking the ’glades, and every one of them had worked in the sugar fields or the plants. It was in their blood; they worked too hard for
what they had, and they were proud. Her youngest boy played high school football at Cane Field, and Inez worked the taffy booth every year at the Sugar Festival. Back in the eighties, they were defaulting on the second mortgage. Tex couldn’t find anything in Clewiston that paid enough on a ninth-grade education, so he did what he had to. The Army recruiter thought Tex was crazy, wanting to enlist at thirty-five. Tex sent as much home as he could…. Marlon told Inez every detail he remembered from the moment he met Tex in the hangar. He answered all her questions tirelessly for hours….

Just before midnight, they said their good-byes in the driveway. Inez held Marlon’s hand and thanked him. As Marlon went to pull away, Inez suddenly found herself squeezing his hand hard—not wanting to let go. Marlon stopped and let her hold on as long as she wanted. Her face was a pained tangle of things she wanted to say. She finally let go, put a trembling hand over her mouth and ran back to the house.

Marlon got in the limo.

“That was a very nice gesture,” said Escrow. “Now we can get back to the Capitol.”

“We’re not going back.”

“What?”

“I have five more widows to visit.”

OVER
the next several days, Escrow made a series of furtive cell phone calls outside gas stations in Homestead, Manalapan and Indiantown.

“You’re fired! No, you’re dead!” shouted Birch.

Escrow pleaded for understanding. There was nothing he could do.

“Where are you? I want to come out there and strangle you myself!”

Escrow took the phone away from his face and slowly closed it shut on the small tin voice.

“Escrow!
Escrow!
”

THE
limo crossed the railroad tracks and Old Dixie Highway in Riviera Beach, and Marlon told the driver to turn off Blue Heron Boulevard. The limo worked its way through a neighborhood even poorer than Jackson’s. When they pulled up to the small wooden house, fifty people were in the front yard in dark suits and dresses.

Escrow’s nerves were starting to crumble from all the black people he had been seeing. Marlon opened the door and got out, but Escrow refused to leave the safety of the limo.

Everyone stopped talking and appraised Marlon as he walked across the lawn.

An older woman stepped from the others and met him halfway. She shook his hand.

“I’m Ethel Washington, Roosevelt’s mother. You must be Marlon. Thank you for your letter about my son.”

She led him into the house and they sat on the couch together. The home was from the forties, in an old section of west Riviera Beach back when the railroad-track color line was enforced.

Three men out on the lawn walked up to the limo, and Escrow ducked. They knocked on the window. “You can come out.”

Escrow waited a few minutes, then slowly raised his head and peeked out the window. They were still there. He ducked again.

“We won’t bite.”

Escrow cautiously opened the door and walked stiffly into the house, and the others followed him inside.

Relatives brought Marlon coffee and cake. Escrow sat in the most remote chair in the room, hands in his lap, legs together, shoulders hunched, eyes darting.

A gold Cadillac pulled up, and four men in leather coats got out. Roosevelt’s wayward cousins from Miami, the Overtown Posse. They walked in the front door and stopped when they saw the white faces. They grumbled among themselves. The word
honky
was said a little too loud.

Ethel Washington shot them a look. “Your manners!”

She and Marlon stood up.

“This is the lieutenant governor, Marlon Conrad, from Roosevelt’s platoon. He’s come to pay his respects.”

The four didn’t move. Marlon walked across the room to shake their hands.

“Now sit down and eat something,” said Ethel.

She got out the photo albums and went through them with Marlon. “Here’s Roosevelt when he was just five…”

The Overtown Posse went in the kitchen and filled paper plates with potato salad. They brought chairs back in the living room, and two sat close on each side of Escrow. They glared at him. Escrow stared straight ahead and made a high-pitched whine like a dog picking up an ultrasonic noise.

Marlon and Ethel went through all five photo albums, and then the family started putting on coats to go over to the funeral home.

Ethel was stoic at the casket. Marlon waited until all the relatives had finished and then he went up. He seemed
to stand there for the longest time. His head gradually began lowering until he was resting his forehead on the edge of the casket.

Ethel got out of her seat and walked up and put an arm around Marlon and led him back to a chair. The Overtown Posse looked at each other.

THE
next day, Enrico Marconi’s funeral in Arcadia. Like the others, they didn’t have much. Marconi’s widow parked their pickup truck on the edge of the cemetery lawn. She left Enrico’s trusty golden retriever, Sinatra, in the front seat with the window rolled down. After the widow closed the door, Sinatra stuck a paw out the window for her to shake.