FLASH
Owen and Leslie followed the brightly dressed real estate agent into the small, dingy-looking home. Their kids followed closely behind.
“It’s a real fixer-upper, you kids are young and full of energy though,” the agent said, “right?”
“We’ve been waiting to take on a project - I just don’t know if this is going to be more than we can handle. What do you think honey?” Leslie asked.
“Look, you two seem like a nice couple and you have such beautiful kids. Let me tell you, if you make a good faith offer to the bank and back it up in writing with a deposit, I can almost guarantee they will take it. We’ll even hit them up for a new roof and carpet!”
“A new roof and carpet are almost guaranteed, it’s the bank’s way of securing the equity to their favor. You’re not doing us any favors. Now let’s talk price,” Owen said, exhausted after viewing houses all day. The sun was beginning to set and he could feel the heat penetrating through the water-stained curtains hanging over the windows.
FLASH
“Your daughter is incorrigible!” Leslie screamed.
“My daughter? Why is it when she does something wrong she becomes my daughter?” Owen asked.
“I’m having another migraine; it’s a killer. Will you please handle this?” Leslie replied as she sat on the side of the bed holding her head in her hands.
FLASH
From the living room, the front lawn looked like a disaster zone. An ambulance and a fire truck were parked next to a deputy sheriff’s cruiser in the driveway. Red, white, and blue lights bounced off the surrounding houses as neighbors dressed in pajamas and robes watched through their windows.
“Sir, what type of medical history does she have?”
“None, I mean she has bad headaches, but that’s it.”
“Her BP is 210 over 140, she’s starting to seize again!” the second paramedic yelled.
“Mommy!” Jade screamed from the kitchen being held back by her sister who stood in silence, trembling at the sight of her seizing mother.
Owen watched in horror as they loaded Leslie into the back of the ambulance. Blood continued to flow from her nose.
FLASH
Owen Sands felt himself falling deeper into a cauldron of wind and flying ice. The air was blue and he looked down at his hands that had now turned gray. He was dressed in shorts. His thighs, too, were a pale gray and his bare feet were molten with ice. Then, with a flash of light, he felt himself in a familiar place, standing on top of the bridge, the Bahia Honda Bridge. He was warm now. The sun was shining and the pavement on top of the bridge was starting to burn the soles of his feet. Next to him was his Leslie. Both were wet from previous jumps.
The Bahia Honda Bridge was made up of two levels. During the historical era that contained Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railroad, Bahia Honda carried both automotive and rail traffic over its span. The cars went over the top while the trains rolled over tracks built into the structure of the underside. Rust-covered steel girders were spaced evenly every four feet, coated with graffiti in different colors.
The excitement of the jump from the first level was obvious. The plunge was nearly thirty feet, but the next level was another thing entirely. The raw exhilaration came from the clarity of the water below. The channel was at least ten feet deep but the mind, at that height, focused on one thing only: the channel bottom. Seeing the seabed as clearly as one could through the pure, crystal-clear water flowing below made the act appear suicidal, almost like flying an airplane headlong into a cloud. Intellect tells the rational mind that what appears solid is not, but the instinctual side sees the white mist as a danger and the side effects can be easily noticed, from sweaty palms to an outright avoidance of clouds altogether. The jump from Bahia Honda affected the mind in much the same way. Just looking down at the rocks and sand on the seabed below made most think twice about the plunge. The fact that there was ten feet of water in between to cushion the fall was irrelevant. He had done this before though, and it was now time for Leslie to experience it with him.
He stood at the top with Leslie at his side. Both were clad in swimsuits, dripping wet from previous jumps at the lower level. Leslie looked down at the rocks and coral crustaceans on the bottom. He could see her heart pounding beneath her chest, exaggerated by her thin frame. He felt responsible for her act of bravery, knowing she would probably have descended back down to the lower level already if not for the jousting he would undoubtedly give if she backed out. She was committed and he knew it.
“Come on Mom!” eight-year-old Jade yelled from an adjacent embankment. “It’s great!”
She looked up at the blaring July sun. It was a scorcher. She looked over her left shoulder. Heat boils rose off the pavement from the top of the bridge forming an oasis of water, another trick of the mind. There was nothing down that bridge but hot, steamy blacktop.
“Come on, it’ll be over in a second,” he said, trying to reassure her.
“Yeah, what if I break my neck?”
“Close your eyes,” he instructed. “Ready, one, two, THREE!”
They felt the wind rush through their bodies as the bridge’s guardrail rose behind them. For a second, leaving the hot blacktop felt good as the cool wind rushed against his feet. Then it got colder. As he looked below, what was bright and sunny had turned gray and blue. Ice and snow blew under the bridge as the two fell and what was a flowing current below started to slow down as the water chilled considerably. Thirty feet from the bottom, the current stopped as Owen watched the water freeze before him. The plummet continued. He looked over at his Leslie who smiled as she kept her eyes closed. What had he done? Jade screamed for her mommy as chunks of ice hit him in the head.
SMACK SMACK SMACK
Owen felt it again as a dry, rotted stick hit him in the forehead for the fourth time, pulling him the rest of the way from his sleep into a world that was crisp, clear and in full color.
“Justin!” a woman yelled. “You leave the homeless man alone!”
Owen opened his eyes all the way, just in time to see a young boy, stick in hand, running over to a neighboring picnic table. He sat straight up, realizing he was lying on top of another picnic table. He was in the Harris Recreation Area, an oceanfront park not far from his house. A mixture of sweat and rainwater covered his chest and face. Next to him was an empty bottle of bourbon, his drug of choice. Now, he was fully awake.
* * * * *
Sunrise
Joel Kenyon’s BMW 320i sliced through the crisp morning air as it hugged the damp roadway, winding through the wetlands of North Key Largo. The car was his father’s and he cherished it as he held his stature through every turn, gripping the wheel with both hands. The lone road stretched out across open bodies of water. A string of telephone poles followed the road, erect in the water with attached steel guide wires securing the poles to the grassy bay bottom. Joel hit the scan button on the stereo. It raced up the frequency range pausing for a second on 99.9. Country. Twanging guitars, dogs, diesels, and doublewide mobile homes: this wouldn’t do. He hit the button again. It scanned higher resting on 103.5. The deep, raspy voice of a DJ identified the station...
“SHE-103, WSHE, Miami-Fort Lauderdale.”
Led Zeppelin’s “All My Love” started to play. With the windows down and the sunroof open, a cool wind embraced his face, cutting around a pair of black Ray-Ban aviators.
Card Sound Road was one of two access routes to and from the Florida Keys. The other, more heavily traveled route was a simple eighteen-mile stretch of straight road that spanned through the southeastern border of the Everglades. Card Sound was the scenic route. Its two lanes wound through clumps of mangroves and over hammocks filled with wildlife. Portions of the road were less than three feet from the lapping water of southern Biscayne Bay and the adjoining Card Sound.
Joel, approaching the tollbooth at the base of the Card Sound Bridge, lowered his radio and listened as the brakes on his 320i squeaked to a stop just sho
rt of a wooden gate stretching across the single lane. The brakes should have been checked before the trip, he thought to himself. But how could he have, with the rigors of the academy and his immediate assignment? It was a given that certain facets of his personal life were going to have to be neglected.
Four quarters went from his hand to the palm of the waiting attendant, an older man dressed in faded blue jeans and a worn Grateful Dead T-shirt. He was not the typical toll taker Joel remembered from traveling along the turnpikes of the Northeast with his dad. All of the memories were the same, representing a world of order and divine structure. He sat back in the seat for a second, gripped the wheel and imagined what it was like for his father to drive this car.
The BMW left the booth with a jolt of power as he approached the bridge’s threshold. Like a rocket, the car ascended the twenty-degree grade, climbing three feet for every ten forward. In no time he reached the top of the hundred and ten foot high structure. The time was ten minutes to eight. Most of Key Largo’s residents who commuted to the mainland everyday traveled the Everglades stretch. Card Sound Road was vacant.
Joel looked north as he stood, leaning against the concrete buffer, then panned to the south, taking in the view of the rising sun. Its orange glow gleamed over the waves breaking into the reef on the horizon and as the light became more intense, he could see the islands below filled with mazes of tributaries connecting larger waterways that were surrounding him. Brilliant turquoise water covered the horizon with Biscayne Bay to the north, Florida Bay to the west and Card Sound to the south. With a pair of German binoculars that had belonged to his father, he panned the interior coastline that started at the base of the bridge and continued south. The small islands were filled with all different varieties of wild birds. During the North Georgia autumn seasons he had seen the flocks of birds, ducks and geese headed south for the colder months. So this is where they go, he thought to himself with a childish grin. The beauty captivated him and he forgot about his sleepless night of driving.
Like the calm before the storm, his attention was interrupted. The panning view of his binoculars caught the sight of the road ahead as it twisted through the trees. The weathered gray asphalt, worn like an old sea captain’s face, filled with small potholes and eroding shoulders, continued on to the south where it disappeared into the green vegetation.
Joel contorted his body as he panned the landscape through the binoculars, scanning every inch of the island below. That’s when he noticed it. A bright red Nissan 300ZX was sitting on the side of the road with its hood opened and a small trail of steam rising skyward from the radiator. His body froze as he stared at the car, so out of place in this landscape that time forgot. A smile came to his face as he watched a woman circle the car in a frantic tantrum, kicking the side of it as she took a large bottle of sparkling water from the passenger seat and headed for the open hood. She was quite pretty, he realized, as he adjusted the focus and zoomed in closer to see her features. She was well-tanned which accentuated her curvy figure. Her short sundress was accented with a white baseball cap that had her dark brown hair tied in a ponytail pulled through an open breach in the back. And then without warning:
BEEEEP
The sharp sound startled Joel who almost dropped the binoculars over the side of the bridge. A silver, metallic Cadillac had pulled up behind his parked BMW and was waiting to pass.
“Sorry, just a second,” Joel said as he jumped into the driver’s seat and drove down the other side of the bridge. As soon as both cars reached the base, the Cadillac accelerated passed him with a frustrated look of impatience that Joel had seen before but never quite understood. He continued south in the direction of the car, and the girl. He watched carefully around every curve expecting to see the red sports car with its raised hood and the girl in dire need of his assistance, but as he continued south, and then off the winding road and onto a larger highway, he realized that she was gone. She did not need him after all.
Twenty-five miles later, Joel pulled into the parking lot matching the address on his yellow legal pad. The building sat back off the main road and was built behind an aquamarine-colored bar and grill called Harry’s Conch Café, a structure unto itself, complete with a thatched palm leaf roofline and old, salty rope around the windows.
He was surprised by the office’s appearance. Mismatched arches gave it an outdated Spanish look. Behind them was a line of recessed windows. Joel peered through the closest pane of glass, rubbing it clean with his jacket sleeve. He noticed what appeared to be surplus desks, chairs and other office equipment. Checking his pocket, he pulled a yellow piece of paper containing the directions and address. A crudely drawn map confirmed his wildest fears. This god-forsaken place was going to be home for a while.
Joel walked around the building and approached the front door. The only identifying mark was a modest ten-inch round U.S. Customs decal affixed over the glass with a small list of emergency contact numbers and the special agent in charge’s business card. As Joel grabbed the tarnished door handle, the glass door shuttered as the locked deadbolt struck the interior of the steel door jam. With his hands cupped around his eyes, he looked into the dimly lit office. Not much could be seen past the foyer. Joel panned the small parking lot realizing his metallic, charcoal import was the only car in the area. After returning to his car, he sat back behind the wheel. Dismayed, confused, and tired from his sleepless night, Joel closed his eyes to avoid the morning sun that was shining directly at his forehead.
Four hours later, Joel awoke to the harsh tapping of something metallic striking his passenger side window. Startled, he sat up and tried to realign his bearings. A short, pudgy man with a red beard stood next to his car holding a five-cell flashlight. He had faded blue jeans and an old blue work shirt with the name HOLMES printed over the right breast pocket and U. S. Customs over the left.
“Can I help you?” Joel asked as he activated the passenger side electric window control. The parking lot was now full and the digital clock on the car radio said 11:32 a.m. He was surprised and embarrassed.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, but you looked like you could use some help. You must be the attorney representing Gomara,” Holmes assumed.
“No, I’m Kenyon, Special Agent Joel Kenyon,” he replied, invoking a laugh from the other man.
“I’m Holmes, special peon Buddy Holmes. Come on; you look like you could use some coffee.”
“Actually I need to see Jordan Cheney,” Joel said.
“You’d better get the coffee first,” Holmes insisted.
“You’re the man,” Joel said as the two walked inside the office. Holmes fixed some coffee while Joel looked around.
“How was the trip?” Holmes asked.
“Bearable,” Joel answered.
“I hate that damned I-95 myself,” Holmes stated.
This was like no other governmental building Joel had ever seen. The complex had been built with drug money and its construction was shut down when the owners were caught in a larger money-laundering scheme. As part of a plea bargain, the government ended up with the property. Since the complex’s construction had been stopped, fifty percent of the building remained unfinished. Built of brick and concrete and utilizing traditional Spanish architecture, the archways and Spanish-style stucco finish gave the building a nice South American look. Past the fascia though, the building was a totally different story with exposed cinderblocks, cement slabs and rusty metal bars protruding from the ground, surrounded by overgrown weeds and wild brush.
The government had no intentions of being in the landlord business, but with over ninety commercial properties in South Florida alone, it had no choice. The current recession made selling the properties nearly impossible and small business worries had few wanting to rent the empty spaces. The end result was several nearly empty buildings.
Jordan Cheney had the only enclosed office in the building. Just outside his space, huge cork bulletin boards hung on the walls with numerous pictures p
inned to them depicting different busts. Most of the pictures had stacks of burlap-skinned marijuana bales, duffel bags of brick cocaine, or boats. The boats were all shapes and sizes. Some were on trailers, others beached on the shore, and others cut to pieces to reveal hidden compartments where their contraband was stowed. All of the pictures did have one thing in common though. All the field agents from the Tavernier office were posing in tight groups, like frat boys standing in front of a Fort Lauderdale strip club on spring break.
“I’m Jordan Cheney. How was the trip?” a voice beamed from behind him.
“Fine. Long, but fine,” Joel answered as he shook his new supervisor’s hand.
“I hate the damned I-95 myself,” the man said repeating, almost word for word, what Holmes had just told him.
Special Agent in Charge Jordan Cheney led Joel through a winding maze of cubicles that made up the Tavernier field office. He was a charismatic man, one who took charge and gave everyone he met the respect he expected in return. Jordan was fifty pounds overweight though he carried the extra pounds well for a man of six-foot-four.
“I’m pairing you up with my group logistics officer. He’s a little antiquated but he’ll show you the ropes and get you up to speed,” Jordan said.
All around him Joel could see the agents of the Tavernier office typing, writing and busy in their own cubicles. Each one was dressed in a similar fashion, all with shorts, color-coordinated polo shirts, and Top-Sider boat shoes. No one wore socks.
Mid Ocean Page 7
