Back to Brooklyn

by Lawrence Kelter

  “Know anything about pirates?”

  “Only what I’ve seen in movies.”

  Lafitte rolled his eyes.

  “This map belonged to a bona fide pirate, not some Hollywood wannabe. His name was Captain Edward Aurora.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Hardly anybody has, outside of North Carolina. You know about Blackbeard?”

  “Of course.”

  “Captain Aurora was a lot bigger, and twice as mean. He and a few other English sailors got shipwrecked on a Caribbean island when he was about eighteen. It took the Royal Navy a couple of years to find them, but he was the only one still alive when they did. His front teeth were filed into sharp points by then, and his blond beard was stained red with blood. They say he’d developed a taste for human flesh.”

  “Holy shit. That’s amazing.”

  “I know, and this was before Novocain. He joined a pirate crew a few months after he got back, and became captain during a bloody mutiny. They say he captured fifteen ships before he was hanged for treason three years later. This map supposedly leads to his buried treasure.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Somewhere on Corcoran Island, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.”

  They sat at the bar together for the next couple of hours. He spun the whole incredible tale while she eagerly nodded along. He said that small piece of parchment was part of a much bigger map, pointing out that it was the most important piece because of that letter X in the center.

  “Look closely. It’s a tiny skull with crossed bones. Somebody finds the rest of that map and they’ll find the treasure.”

  “Where’s the other half?”

  “I’d start by looking in Stonehaven, if I was a younger man.”

  His finger was still planted firmly on the map when Shayna finally looked up. She was surprised to see that Keely’s was filling up with a rowdy crowd. Georgia and Ida both looked like they were sleepwalking as they filled orders and drank themselves awake. Neither of them made eye contact with Shayna.

  She turned back to speak with Lafitte, but he was already across the room hanging the map back on the wall. The bouncer was sitting on his stool instead. He looked her up and down, practically licking his lips.

  “Hey, Shayna. I’ve got something for you.”

  She craned her neck to look for the old man, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Seat’s taken, Adam.”

  “Was Lafitte telling you his pirate stories?”

  “Be nice, asshole. He’s sweet.”

  “Hey, now. You’re sexy when you’re mean.”

  The bouncer reached into his leather jacket, producing an official-looking envelope. Part of Shayna wished it was another map, until she saw it was addressed to her. She reached for it, but he pulled it back at the last second.

  “I thought that might get your attention, but I’ve got something even better.”

  He reached into his other pocket, pulling out a tightly folded piece of paper. It was about the size of a matchbook and practically bursting with cocaine. She watched for a moment as he flipped it between his fingers like a magician would a coin—before fumbling it to the floor.

  The bouncer leapt from his chair to recover the coke. Shayna took the opportunity to snatch the envelope from his outstretched hand. She spun on her barstool and sliced it open with her fingernail. The life insurance check inside was made out to her in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars.

  She felt the bouncer’s hot breath on the back of her neck. He leaned in to put his arm around her shoulder.

  “Damn, girl! You hit the lottery. Let’s celebrate.”

  He waved the bindle under her nose. She tried to ignore him, but there was no doubt he’d gotten her attention.

  Shayna looked over to where Georgia and Ida were mixing up cocktails and flirting with the pathetic regulars. She could clearly picture them doing the same thing, night after night, for the next twenty years. Then she imagined herself right there beside them, weathered, wrinkled and washed out. The thought of it made her skin crawl.

  That’s when she made up her mind. It was definitely time to leave New Orleans, but not without a little going away party for two. Shayna grabbed the bouncer’s wrist and led him upstairs.

  ***

  Her dreams teemed with pirates that night. She imagined wooden boats filled with swashbuckling men who swung from ropes with swords in their teeth. Buried treasure chests dotted the white sandy beaches of a thousand tiny islands, where palm trees swayed in the violent tropical breezes. Powder flashed from the flared muzzle of a blunderbuss as she wandered through the bloody battle in her tattered wench’s dress. Cannons erupted all around her, spitting out fire and filling the air with acrid smoke.

  Smoke.

  Shayna’s eyes shot open. The bouncer was passed out cold in the bed beside her. Strange voices were screaming downstairs. It felt too late for the bar to be open, but she was too disoriented to know for sure. The familiar scent of burning wood filled her nostrils. She tiptoed over to the bedroom door, cracking it open an inch or two.

  A policeman was frantically waving his flashlight at the top of the stairs. The yellow beam danced across the tendrils of gray smoke that curled around his boots. He was yelling for everybody to get out of the building before it burned to the ground. She slammed the door shut, gathering her scattered clothes from the floor. It’s nearly impossible to put a thong on backwards, but Shayna almost managed to do so in her rush to get dressed.

  She tossed the rest of her possessions into a bag and went over to the bed. Two chalky white lines were still laid out on the nightstand. She grabbed a rolled up dollar bill and polished them off. The bouncer’s pistol was there too, along with his keys and wallet. She fished a couple of hundred-dollar bills out, tucking them into her bra. She definitely didn’t need the money now, but that didn’t stop her from taking it.

  She reached down, pinching his nostrils shut. It seemed like an eternity before he sprang up in a panic.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “There’s some kind of fire. Cops are all over place.”

  He rubbed his eyes and jumped out of bed.

  “This has Ida written all over it.”

  Shayna opened the door, heading downstairs without looking back. Shadows dashed through the orange glow in the barroom. She hung a right at the bottom, hugging the wall until she reached the men’s bathroom. The boxy frame was still hanging right where Lafitte had left it. She pulled it from the hook, shoving it into her bag.

  Fire trucks wailed down the street outside. Georgia and Ida were seated on the curb when Shayna finally emerged. Several policemen hovered around them, barking orders into their radios. The women’s faces twisted into horrible, forced smiles when they caught sight of her.

  Georgia waved her over. Ida leaned forward when Shayna walked up; her voice was a scratchy hiss.

  “See what you get when you sleep with my man?”

  It was all too familiar for Shayna. She needed to get out of there before the panic took over. There was no way she could be associated with another fire without somebody putting two and two together. Shayna might not have started this one with a match, but they could still trace the spark back to her.

  She slipped by, making a beeline for her red convertible. It was parked across the street and down the block—far enough away from the commotion that it wouldn’t be blocked in by any emergency vehicles. She climbed behind the wheel, started the engine and stomped on the gas. There was nowhere for her to go, no place she had to be. Her head spun with the lonely possibilities, but the tank was full enough to get her out of town.

  She looked down at her bag in the passenger seat. A corner of the frame was poking out like a tiny wooden arrow. She reached over and snatched it up, Lafitte’s final words running through her mind.

  I’d start by looking in Stonehaven…

  Shayna took the first on-ramp. She didn’t slow down until she crossed th
e North Carolina state line thirteen hours later. From there she only had to follow the road signs leading the way to “The Home of Captain Aurora.”

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview of the action-adventure crime thriller Gitmo by Shawn Corridan and Gary Waid…

  Prologue

  Castro is dead.

  ¡Gracias a Dios!

  Now what?

  ***

  The veranda curtains were partially drawn against the full moon, yet the young servant girl could see everything. Her mistress was lying on the bed, curled into a protective ball, elbows over her head, knees to her chest. The maid heard the steady breathing, slow and strong, and no hint of a whimper, nor pleas for help. Just another night in which the master of the house had lost control, using his considerable authority at home instead of at his Ministerio de Justicia. This time it was about Raúl. Prior to that, it was always Fidel.

  The girl had heard the shouting. She wasn’t snooping or sneaking around—the angry words could not be blocked out. And her imagination could not be stilled. There was change in the wind, and it was frightening. So she sat downstairs by the kitchen door and waited. It was very late, almost dawn. Shapes of moonlight washed over the gardens and the trellises of bougainvillea, turning the warm tropical colors into moving shadows and white ice. Out beyond the cliffs the beach was a ribbon of bone fronting a sea ablaze with summer phosphorescence.

  Eventually the generalisimo had left. First there was the sound of a shower running and she imagined him putting on his uniform, slipping his black leather gloves into his coat pocket, and striding out the front door. His coffee would be waiting for him at the ministry. He was an important man with an important job, a violent job that he seemed to enjoy too much.

  But sometimes he brought his work home. Lately he’d been ranting about Fidel’s younger brother and his new pact with the United States. A deal that would certainly put an end to the niche he’d carved out for himself. But things moved slowly in communist Cuba. He still had time. And President-elect Trump was a wild card at best.

  The girl had earlier assembled her things—a pair of clean towels, a pan of warm water, some mild soap. She would open the door and go to the woman and clean her up. She knew what was needed. She’d done it many times before.

  The woman would protest. She would deny that she’d been hurt. But she would accept the assistance, and the morning sunlight would stream into the room and another day would begin.

  1

  Dixon Sweeney shaded his eyes and looked at a cloud, a puffy little thing hanging on the horizon. Maybe it was a sign, an omen of his first free breath in eight years. He picked up his cardboard box with the duct-taped handle containing all his possessions and walked down the three concrete steps and out into the early morning heat that dampened his body and stained the pits of his Goodwill suit.

  He glanced back at the huge, institutional green complex that was Florida State Prison. Well that sucked, he thought. He turned around again and his face went prickly hot and he suddenly felt naked because there was nobody there to greet him. Calm down, he told himself. An emotional episode would not be cool.

  He changed mental directions and decided to ignore the homecoming slight. I’m keeping this suit forever, he decided. He pulled at his crotch. The seersucker coat didn’t cover his wrists, and the seersucker pants didn’t cover his ankles. But so what? He could hang it on the wall. Or eat the lining. It was bound to taste better than the glop that passed for food inside prison walls.

  The guards had laughed at him when he received his clothes that morning. A bunch of redneck guards laughing at his cracker ass and making jokes. He wasn’t the first guy they’d ever forced to wear a clown suit on his way out the door.

  “You’ll be back,” cackled Sergeant Dimmit Hogg Hardin, a steroidal fatso who belonged in a zoo. “Y’all boys are all the same. Wash some dishes, mow some lawns, dig some ditches, you every one come back. Besides, ain’t no dicks to suck like they is in prison.”

  “Ah, so that’s why you’re still here,” replied Sweeney.

  “I’m here to slap the shit out of smartasses,” said Hogg, stepping closer, snapping his rubber gloves at the wrists. Playtime was apparently over.

  “I’m gonna miss you, Officer Hardon,” said Sweeney as he tucked his shirt in.

  “Hardin,” said the sergeant now inches from Sweeney’s mug. “Sergeant Dimmit Hardin.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to live with that,” Sweeney said. He turned and ducked through the gates just as Hardin was reaching for him.

  The heat was overpowering and the mosquitoes were a torrent by the time the bus stopped in an open swale of dirt commonly used by protesters who gathered for executions. Sweeney picked up his box and climbed aboard. There were only a few riders, but he sat in the back, as far from anyone as he could. The new noises frightened him. Conversations confused him. Colors blinded him. And making any kind of decision was damn near impossible. So he sat by the latrine and endured the stink and watched the miles roll by. He wondered again why his wife hadn’t been there to greet him at the gates. Where the hell was she? This was Sweeney’s big day. This was his coming-out party, his delivery and whack-on-the-butt-so-he-could-breathe moment. Yet no one was there to welcome him or even stare at him and wonder if he took it up the ass six times a day from Aldo the Gorilla and his posse.

  He rubbed his broken nose. It had healed long ago, but it wasn’t straight anymore.

  Boy, did that suck.

  Eight years ago, he’d been accused of smuggling Cuban refugees into Florida. A whole boatload of them. He’d denied it, of course, and the assistant state attorney, a guy named Alvin Scopher, had called him a liar.

  But Sweeney had stuck to his guns. He’d made it hard.

  So the investigators got mad, objecting and carping and working him over. And that’s when Sweeney knew they were having trouble getting witness testimony.

  That’s also when Scopher went to Dixon’s mother, Mrs. Adelia Sweeney, getting old, ailing, sometimes becoming confused, especially in the face of such a creep. And when the creep accused Mrs. Sweeney of harboring smugglers, of abetting a criminal, and told her he was going to be forced to go federal and she was going to lose her house and do hard time as an “organizer/manager,” Dixon, her only son, had to cave. He’d had to plead out, take the eight, learn a new language that began with sally ports clanging behind him and ending an hour ago, in the heat, on the wide prison sidewalk where no one was waiting.

  The day after he’d signed the plea agreement his mother died.

  And although he’d blamed the assistant prosecutor at the time, he’d decided later that he was as much at fault as anyone. He’d petitioned the court to go to the funeral—his father had been dead for years—but the judge denied him because, he said, a man such as Dixon Sweeney, who knows about boats and knows too many people and traffics in human misery, can’t be trusted.

  Alvin Scopher got a promotion for his diligent efforts at enforcing the law, while Sweeney went off to get an education at Gladiator State.

  Yes, Dixon Sweeney was a cracker all right, a native Floridian, a dying breed put on this earth to serve the people of the “New South.” And now he had a record—a personal history that set him even further apart. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t be forced to wash dishes, mow lawns, or dig ditches for a living.

  That would really suck.

  2

  Two hours later the bus stopped in Pahokee, a hamlet along the banks of Lake Okeechobee. Sweeney had a half hour to kill so he took a little stroll. He fished around in his box, dug out a prison-issued, brown bag lunch and stepped off the bus. The sky was still clear, the sun was still hot, the seersucker still clinging. Yet for the first time in all those years there wasn’t a twenty-foot stone wall to contemplate or razor wire to navigate. This would be his first walk as a free man. A new day was dawning for Dixon.

  He’d been to Pahokee once with his dad when he was a kid. There was a fishing le
gend there by the name of Hodie Grubbs who’d made the best split-bamboo fly fishing rods in Florida, and Sweeney’s father wanted one in the worst way. Pahokee back then was a quaint little town with one filling station, a sprinkling of greasy spoons, and a single traffic light. Sweeney could see the place had grown but not much; there still wasn’t a Starbucks or McDonald’s to spoil the ambiance. And sure enough, the old Wylie-Baxley funeral home was still there on the corner across from the bus station. He never forgot their slogan: “You Better Bereave It!” He’d often wondered over the years if the undertaker was Japanese.

  A block from the station Sweeney found himself on a cracked sidewalk that fronted huge gabled houses shaded by hundred-year-old oaks. So far so good. Nothing had changed. He smiled as he turned the corner into the neighborhood.

  The world’s still the same. Thank God for—

  “Get ’er, Bingo!” squealed a morbidly obese lady in a flowered housedress. Her legs were swollen blue logs and she was hovering over two Chihuahuas fucking on one of the sagging porches, filming the furry little porn stars with her iPhone. “Move it, little buddy, we’re goin’ viral!” she said to the little jackhammer. His eyes were bugged, his tongue wagging.

  Well. Maybe some things have changed…

  Sweeney turned away. Across the street, a trio of bare-chested, Middle Eastern street toughs in baggy jeans were popping ollies and power slides on their new-fangled skateboards. He was just about to wave to the lads when they regarded him in his seersucker outfit and laughed. One called him a “straight up faggot.” Another called him a “dick-sucking, butt-packing, felching Mo.”