by Les Abend
WildBluePress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
PAPER WINGS published by:
WILDBLUE PRESS
P.O. Box 102440
Denver, Colorado 80250
Publisher Disclaimer: Any opinions, statements of fact or fiction, descriptions, dialogue, and citations found in this book were provided by the author, and are solely those of the author. The publisher makes no claim as to their veracity or accuracy, and assumes no liability for the content.
Copyright 2017 by Les Abend
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
WILDBLUE PRESS is registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Offices.
ISBN 978-1-942266-63-1 Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-942266-64-8 eBook
Interior Formatting/Book Cover Design by Elijah Toten www.totencreative.com
PAPER WINGS
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter One
Saturday
15:30 EDT
Tony cocked his head back and swallowed the last remaining gulp from the Budweiser can. He scrunched his face as if he had eaten a raw lemon. The beer was flat and warm. Despite the Neoprene coolie cup embroidered with a cartoon caricature of a Hooter’s girl that engulfed the can, the early morning Florida sun had warmed his favorite beverage way beyond his liking. Tony jammed the empty container back into the cup holder just to the right of the shift levers on the Donzi. He wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. With his right hand, Tony pulled back on the two throttle levers. The thirty-five-foot boat began to slow, the bow settling into the turquoise waters of the Gulf Stream.
Frank climbed up onto the deck of the Donzi. His bronze beer belly jiggled over the top of the elastic waist band of his calf-length khaki shorts. He lowered his sunglasses, straining to see any sign of a person on board the express cruiser that was floating a hundred yards in front of them.
“Do ya see anybody, Frankie?” Tony bellowed from behind the Plexiglas windscreen of the center console.
“Nope…nuthin’ yet, Tony.” Frank slid his feet out into a wide stance, balancing himself as waves rocked the bow. “I think the boat is one of them old thirty-foot-somethin’ Sea Rays with an aft cabin. Probably ‘80’s vintage.” Frank let out a throaty belch, releasing the trapped gas from his last can of Coors Light.
The two men had known each other since elementary school in New Jersey. They had learned how to drive together. They had learned about girls together. They had got into trouble together. Nothing much had changed except for their ages. For almost fifteen years, the two men were partners in their own Fort Lauderdale construction company, a business that had flourished despite the fact neither Tony nor Frank had been educated beyond the eleventh grade. This weekend, they were escaping the wives and the kids for their annual July fishing trip to Bimini.
Halfway back from the island, Tony’s eyes had captured a brief glint of the light reflected off something on the horizon. The light had come from the deck rail of the Sea Ray. The older boat was now bobbing a few feet in front of them. The white hull was chalky, dulled by years of neglect, tortured by the sun.
“Yo!…Yo! Anybody home?” Frank yelled, cupping his hands in front of his mouth. No response from the Sea Ray.
Tony called to Frank. “I’ll get ya close enough to jump off, Frankie. Climb on board and see if you can find somethin’.”
Frank looked back at Tony and raised a thumb in a sign of approval.
As Tony maneuvered the Donzi alongside the Sea Ray, inches from touching, Frank lurched forward, taking a small leap onto the side deck of the other boat. With his friend safely aboard, Tony pulled the gear levers aft, moving the Donzi in reverse and away from the Sea Ray.
Frank stepped down into the cockpit and underneath the faded blue canopy. He swiveled his head, scanning the entire boat from bow to stern. A beaded trail of red dots spattered a portion of the deck. A black, semiautomatic handgun that Frank recognized as a Glock, similar to what he and Tony carried with them to some of their undesirable job sites, was lying on the cockpit floor.
Reaching down, Frank picked up the Glock using two fingers pinched around the gnarled grip. He didn’t know why, but suddenly realized that touching the damn gun was probably a mistake. Frank dropped the Glock back down onto the deck as quickly as he had retrieved it.
He looked at Tony and shrugged his shoulders. Tony pointed at the sliding door that led down the short stairway into the cabin. Frank nodded.
“Anybody home?” Frank called out again as he stared at the closed cabin door. He began to feel a sense of uneasiness, unable to determine why. He took a deep breath and then unlatched the door. He put a foot on the first step and peered inside the cabin and into the salon. He surveyed the entire area.
A plastic tumbler was rolling back and forth in the salon sink. Resting on its side, a half empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin sat on the center table. A wooden model of some type of commercial airliner was crushed on the floor like a large bug; the two miniature engines were separated from the wings. Nothing stirred. Frank took another step lower. That was as far as he got.
An overwhelming stench filled his nostrils. The stench seemed to invade every pore of his body. He began to gag. Frank turned and stepped back up into the cockpit. He slammed the sliding door shut. He stumbled toward the stern of the boat and through the transom door out onto the swim platform. He leaned forward and dropped to his knees, spewing out what remained of his mahi-mahi sandwich and the day’s beer.
With confused amazement, Tony watched his wide-eyed friend scurry out of the Sea Ray cabin.
“Frankie? What the fuck? Are you all right?”
Frank raised his hand in a stop motion, a signal to give him a moment. He retched again. Frank scooped water from the ocean and splashed it on his face. He repeated the process a few more times.
“Whatcha see, buddy?” Tony asked, an impatient tone to his voice. He jockeyed the Donzi closer to the Sea Ray. “Was it your sister naked or something?” He chuckled. “That would ruin my whole week, man.”
Frank spit out some sea water, turned his head toward Tony and said, “Didn’t see nothin’. It just smelled in there…worse than anything I ever known.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Whad’ya think it was, man?”
“Don’t know…Don’t think I wanna know, Tony.”
“Okay…okay.” Tony pursed his lips for a moment and sighed. “Well…we can’t just leave this boat out here floatin’. We’d be breaking some kinda maritime law or something. We gotta drag the damn thing in. Let’s take it through the inlet and give it to the Coast Guard on the other side.”
“I say fuck it.”
“Yeah
…I know how you feel, Frankie. But what if it was your boat?”
Frank took a deep breath and shook his head. “All right. Throw me a line and I’ll cleat it to the bow.” Frank put his hand on his hips and stared at Tony. He gestured back at the Sea Ray cockpit. “But I ain’t gettin’ back into that cabin again.”
Tony nodded. He walked over to a side compartment on the Donzi and pulled out a coiled, white line. He tossed the line to Frank. Frank unwound the line as he walked to the bow of the Sea Ray. He pulled the loop end through the bottom of the cleat on the starboard side and hooked it to the prongs. He gave the line a tug and tossed the remaining length back to Tony. Tony secured the other end to a port side cleat on the transom of the Donzi. Frank shuffled his way back to the lower deck of the Sea Ray and then jumped aboard the Donzi.
Frank grunted as his flat feet plopped to the deck. “Go slow, Tony.” He fed out the line attached to the Sea Ray until it was taut and the boat was about seventy-five feet behind them. The bow of the old boat waggled for a moment and then remained steady as Tony moved the throttles forward, increasing the speed.
“We’re good,” Frank said. He watched as the size of the wake splashing along the sides of the bow on the Sea Ray blossomed. He turned forward and took a few steps toward Tony, who was leaning against the bolster seat behind the center console. He pointed at the GPS. “Ten miles to Port Everglades. It’s gonna take us friggin’ forever to get there with that damn boat in tow.”
Tony grinned. “Yeah, but look on the bright side. That’s gonna mean less time you have to spend listenin’ to the old lady bitch at you for going away this week.”
“You got a point there,” Frank said with a smile. “I guess there’s only one thing left to do then…” Frank glanced at the white cooler that rested against the stern bulkhead. It was the size of a foot locker. He walked over to the cooler and opened the lid. He reached in with one hand and pushed cubes of ice aside. It sounded as though gravel was being moved by a metal rake. He pulled out two cans of beer and handed a Budweiser to Tony. The two men pulled their ring tops in unison. The popping sound was a familiar orchestra.
18:30 EDT
The towing of the Sea Ray proceeded without issues, at least until just before Port Everglades. As an afterthought, Tony had decided to call the Coast Guard on Channel 16 about two miles from the inlet. After a few brief exchanges, the professional voice at the other end of the radio began to develop a chill. Tony was slurring his words.
The fact that Tony had to respond on the VHF with the call sign of his boat didn’t help matters. The Donzi was named “Bottoms Up.” It was not the kind of attention that either man needed.
The Coast Guard officer requested a few details regarding the condition of the Sea Ray and then ordered Tony to discontinue the tow. A Coast Guard vessel would arrive shortly to resume the operation. The Donzi would be escorted to a dock at the Coast Guard station, just to the south of Port Everglades.
As if the flashing lights from the Coast Guard boat weren’t enough, it would soon look like an outdoor disco a short while after Tony and Frank arrived at the dock. The Broward County Sheriff’s Department became part of the production. An assembly of police boats and cop cruisers descended upon the area.
Frank knew it was going to be a long day when the pimply-faced Coast Guard officer who climbed aboard the Sea Ray exited the cabin in a rush. It was the same rush that Frank had done hours earlier. But this time something had been seen. And by the anguished look of the young officer’s face, whatever was down in that cabin had to be awful.
Shit! Why couldn’t they have just left the fucking boat to float out there? It would have been somebody else’s fucking problem!
It didn’t take long for the cops to separate Frank and Tony. Frank was brought to a room in the Coast Guard station. Tony was escorted to an aft seat on one of the sheriff’s boats. Tony always wanted to see what kind of equipment the cops had on board their boats, but not this way. This way sucked.
Darkness had fallen hours ago. Tony had lost track of time. And now a man with a brown pockmarked face was stepping off the dock and onto the sheriff’s boat. He wore casual slacks and an open-collared palm tree shirt that hung over a belly that strained against the lower buttons. He smiled and introduced himself to Tony as Detective Jorge Alvarez. He held Tony’s driver’s license between his puffy thumb and forefinger. The driver’s license had been surrendered to the Coast Guard officer just after they had docked.
“Mr. Cusmano, have you ever been in trouble with the law before?” Detective Alvarez asked.
Tony stared at his feet for a moment and then looked back at the brown-skinned man. “Uh, yeah…maybe a couple of times.”
Christ! How far back are they going to go? Certainly not as far back as the dopey car heist that they pulled in their twenties.
Alvarez asked, “You’ve got a pending DUI conviction, isn’t that right?”
“Oh, shit,” Tony thought. He forgot about that one. He was almost relieved. “Yeah, Detective. I got a little stupid one night.”
Alvarez nodded. He scanned the Intracoastal Waterway for a moment and then looked back at Tony. His dark eyes didn’t waver. “Tell me what happened with the Sea Ray.”
Tony took a deep breath. “Nothin’ happened. We just found it floating about ten miles off the coast and towed it in to you guys. End of story. Shit, we thought we were doin’ the right thing.”
“Tell me the whole story…from the time you and Frank left for Bimini until now.”
Tony sighed. He opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out. He stared back at the big detective. He shrugged his shoulders and began to tell the story from the morning they left the dock on Friday until they found the old boat today.
When Tony finished, he raised his palms in a sign of resignation and said, “That’s it. There’s nothing else.”
Alvarez stared at the deck of the sheriff’s boat for a moment. He looked up. “Tony, I want you to answer a question honestly.”
“Oh, shit, here it comes,” thought Tony.
“How do you feel about gays?”
“What?” Tony answered with an incredulous expression on his face.
“You know what I mean. Gay people. What do you think about gay people, Tony?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t care.” Tony cleared his throat. “Why?”
“You ever feel like killing one…just out of principle, let’s say?”
“Fuck no. Why should I?”
“Did you ever cut up a man and throw him in a dumpster?”
Tony started to squirm on the seat. A uniformed cop on the boat shifted his stance and stared at him.
“Detective, I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at.”
“Mr. Cusmano, does the name Jonathan ring a bell?”
“No…should it?”
“Ever been to a restaurant on Los Olas Boulevard and have a heated discussion with someone…someone like the owner?”
Oh, crap. Tony had completely forgotten. Tony said, “His father and I had issues, but that was just between us. It’s been weeks since I had the argument…discussion with his dad.”
“But you did go to the son’s restaurant and threaten to cut his balls off if his father didn’t produce a decent roofing contract.”
“Who told you that?”
“Technology told me that, Mr. Cusmano.”
“What does that mean?”
“We have a security video of what appears to be you in a rather animated discussion with the restaurant owner. After viewing the video, a witness recalled the threat you made.”
“Do I need to call my lawyer now?”
“It depends on what you and your buddy say.”
Tony let out a breath through his nose and asked, “Guess you guys found something on that boat?”
Alvarez looked at the uniformed officer. The uniformed officer shrugged his shoulders. The detective’s eyes narrowed. He stared at Tony.
“A guy
with a bullet through his chest, Mr. Cusmano.” Alvarez paused for effect. “He was lying on the V-berth in a pool of blood.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What’s it got to do with me…or the gay kid at the restaurant?”
“Well, you guys claim that you found the boat floating by itself. You’ve never been a choirboy, Mr. Cusmano. That’s no surprise to anybody. And your last adventure now connects you with a murder, a murder of a homosexual.”
“Murder!? Are you nuts? When did this happen? I’ve been away for the weekend!”
The detective grinned and gestured his head at Tony’s Donzi, still tied up at the Coast Guard dock. “Judging by that boat, you must have a few bucks in your wallet. Fuel’s not cheap these days. Maybe you had someone else get their hands dirty.”
“You guys think that I’m a gay basher?” Tony’s voice was developing a slight angry tone. Clenching his teeth, he asked, “So who was this guy on the boat, anyhow?”
The detective nodded at the uniform cop and then slid next to Tony on the aft seat. The two men were now separated by only inches.
Alvarez whispered into Tony’s ear. “The guy was a pilot. He flew for Patriot Airlines, based in Miami. A few cops have seen him at the restaurant.”
“So?”
“So…a picture was found on the cell phone of the dead pilot in the cabin of the Sea Ray. And guess what?”
Tony could feel something move to the bottom of his stomach. He braced for Alvarez’s next statement.
The big man’s lips held a slight upturn at the corners. “The picture is none other than the gay restaurant owner that was found in the dumpster weeks after you had words with his father.”
Tony’s chest started to tighten. His vision narrowed into a small swath of gray. He was fucked.
