The Orchid Keeper: A Sean O'Brien Novel

by Tom Lowe

  Joe turned to his campaign manager. “Did you hear that, Larry? We have requests for T-shirts and matching hats.”

  “They’re coming soon,” he said with a mail-slot grin. “We didn’t want to make hundreds of T-shirts and have nobody to wear them. Now that we see the crowds are getting consistent and larger, we have the demand, and we’ll pump out the shirts and hats.”

  The woman pulled a pair of dark, turtle shell glasses from her large straw purse. “I’d be happy to buy mine. On that note, how can I make a campaign contribution?”

  Garner was quick to say, “You can write a check, payable to the Joe Thaxton for state senator candidacy or you can go online to our website and make a donation with your credit card.”

  She reached back in her purse and whipped out a checkbook. “No better time than the present.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said, as the woman stepped aside and used the support of the wooden podium to write the check, Larry Garner making small talk as she chatted and wrote, a mockingbird chortling from a live oak.

  Joe and Jessica turned to the last man in line and Joe said, “If it’s not Captain Roland Hatter. How the heck are you, Roland?”

  The man grinned, his brown face crinkling with sun lines on both sides of his pale blue eyes. He was tall and lanky, large hands and powerful forearms, the long-limbed build of a cowboy who’d spent half his life on a horse herding cattle. He wore a loose-fitting, short-sleeve shirt outside his blue jeans. “I’m doin’ good,” he said, shaking Joe’s hand. “Hey, Jessica, it’s been awhile. So glad to hear Kristy is well and doing fine.”

  Jessica gave Roland a hug. “I have to pick her up from school this afternoon. Thank you so much for coming out to the rally today.”

  “I was in the area, heard Joe on the radio, and decided to drop by. I’m glad I did. You got a helluva campaign goin’ on. Years ago, you were asking me for pointers on how to find fish for your clients. And, now look at you … fishin’ for votes. Well, you sure as heck got mine!”

  Joe smiled. “Thank you, Roland. And you were nice enough to give me some sorely needed suggestions way back in the day. You still fishing the Mad Hatter outta Ponce Inlet, or did you get another boat?”

  “Still got her. Wouldn’t trade any time soon. I’m not out there on the water as much as I used to be. On account of the algae blooms and crap in the water, I’ve had more cancellations in the last couple of years than I have had in the nearly thirty years I’ve working as a fishing guide. Dozens of guides like me are damn glad you’re taking this thing on and tryin’ to do something to turn the tide, so to speak. We’re getting more and more green slime in the river and lagoon. People won’t pay their hard-earned money to fish around that crap. I used to come in from a run and listen to a half-dozen booking inquiry messages just about every day. Now, if I’m lucky, I’ll get a half-dozen inquiries in a week, and it’s only if the news isn’t showing green gunk on the water for miles.”

  Joe looked at the American flag painted on the water tank towering near the park. He said, “Together, we can change that. I think we have a good guy runnin’ for governor. If he wins, and if I can get in there, I know I can work with him. He wants to restore the glades, fix the rivers and runoff so it won’t kill the fishing industry and the people, too.” Joe glanced at his watch. “We need to get going.”

  “I’ll walk with you to your truck,” said Roland.

  Larry Garner thanked the woman who wrote the check as she turned and walked toward a parking lot. Garner said, “Joe, I’m parked next to your truck.”

  “So am I,” said Jessica. “I need to run and pick up Kristy from school. I wish I could go to the newspaper editorial board with you. Maybe the next one. I know in my heart that there will be more opportunities for endorsements.”

  Joe, Jessica, Garner, and Roland followed a wide sidewalk meandering through the park toward the largest tree in the manicured setting of queen palm trees, azaleas, black wrought iron benches and old oaks with hanging moss. Jessica remembered seeing the two men standing near the largest oak. They were gone, but the smirks on their faces seemed to hide in the dark shadows falling over the verdant lawn. After walking another fifty feet, Joe abruptly stopped.

  He stared at his truck.

  “What the hell is that?” mumbled Roland.

  “That’s a crime!” said Garner, whipping out his phone.

  The tires were flat.

  All four punctured.

  Jessica touched her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God! I can’t believe this.”

  SIXTEEN

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the police dispatcher asked.

  Larry Garner, pacing near Joe’s damaged truck, phone in one ear, face flushed, said, “I’d like to report vandalism in Gazebo Park. State senate candidate, Joe Thaxton’s pickup truck was vandalized. All four tires are slashed. A windshield wiper is twisted off. And someone keyed the paint on one side of the truck.”

  “Is anyone hurt?”

  “Financially, yes. Physically, no.”

  “We’ll have an officer there in a few minutes.” The dispatcher disconnected.

  Garner looked at Joe, Jessica, and Roland. “Police are on their way. This is beyond getting into the mud. This is an attack. It’s an attack against Joe, his campaign, and his supporters who demand change.”

  Joe looked around the park, a worker in the distance using a leaf blower, two children playing on a swing set, their mother standing near them. He looked at the damage to his truck, the flat tires, the long scratch in the paint, the twisted wiper blade. “I never expected this kind of reaction. I’m hitting more than a nerve … I’m making them run scared. They’re afraid their cushy way of life, making hundreds of millions of dollars, while polluting our rivers, lakes and beaches is going to come to a halt.”

  Roland shook his head, scratching the whiskers on his chin, his eyes searching the park. “Takes balls or plain stupidity to do this in a park that was filled with a couple hundred people just an hour ago.”

  Jessica moved her purse to her left shoulder and folded her arms. “Joe’s received threats. He’s obviously making some people nervous, making them take him seriously. I don’t know if they did it, but I spotted two men standing near that big oak tree, and they looked out of place.”

  “What do you mean?” Roland asked.

  “They never applauded at anything Joe said. Never smiled. Most of the time their arms were folded across their chests. One guy looked like he was using a pocket knife to clean under his fingernails. They wore dark glasses and baseball hats. It was hard for me to see their faces clearly, but there was no mistaking what their body language was saying. They looked like they despised everything Joe was saying, especially when you took questions from the audience.”

  Joe said, “I’m definitely rocking the boat. I never entered this race thinking it was going to be easy. I just didn’t think I would be bullied by people who sure as hell don’t want me to win.”

  Roland nodded. “You think the big ag money is behind this?”

  “Who knows. I’d hope they wouldn’t stoop so low.”

  “Could be the guy you’re runnin’ against, Scott Sherman. Maybe he’s behind it.”

  “I don’t think he’d get down this far in the mud. Somebody wants me to shut up, or to drop out of the race. I won’t do either.”

  Larry Garner looked around the park. “Where are the police?”

  “What are they going to do?” Jessica asked, her voice filled with frustration. “We’ve reported the telephone threats. Police, unfortunately, have no clue. They seem to say that threats are just that … threats. And, until someone commits some kind of physical crime, like assaulting my husband, they can’t go after the culprits. We’re told they can’t enforce restraining orders if there is no one by name to restrain. In the meantime, I’m frightened that someone will try to hurt Joe.”

  Garner looked at the flat tires. “Well, there’s the evidence of a physical crime. Maybe that’ll
give them something they can use.”

  Jessica said, “If anyone in the crowd saw something, it’d seem like they would have told us or called 9-1-1.”

  Joe said, “My truck was parked behind the audience. A guy with a sharp ice pick could have hit all four tires in less than thirty seconds. These threats are getting more violent, but they won’t stop me. The mission is too great.”

  Roland cleared his throat, glancing around the park, up to the American flag on the water tank and then down, looking directly at Joe. “I’ve known you and Jessica for a long time. I know there is nobody better to run for that office with this agenda at this time than you. This is a huge issue, and that’s why you’re getting these threats ‘cause you’re stepping on toes and old money is taking you seriously, as they ought to. They stepped over the line with this kind of crap. Since the police don’t seem to be able to help until some freak decides to stick the icepick in your back, sounds like you need to consider options.”

  “What options do we have?” Jessica asked.

  “A body guard would be one.”

  Joe shook his head. “We don’t have the funds for that. It’s not like I’m running for president of the United States and need Secret Service protection.”

  Roland cut eyes to the flat tires and twisted wiper blade. “You need some kind of protection.”

  Jessica said, “You mentioned options, as in more than one. Is there something else?”

  Roland shoved his hands in his pockets just as a City of Stuart police cruiser pulled into the parking lot. No lights flashing. Two officers in the car. Roland looked at them a second and then shifted his eyes to Jessica. “Yes. Maybe a private investigator would be the solution if you can find the right person.”

  “Again,” Joe said, shaking his head, “we don’t have the funds. Everything that goes into the campaign is needed to pay for expenses and to buy advertising time on television and radio.”

  Roland watched the officers slowly get out of their car. Moving with no real sense of urgency. He said, “There’s a guy at Ponce Marina, we’ll he isn’t there a lot. But he has a boat there. I met him once. He’s low-key. Tall fella with a lot of muscle. But more than that, he seems like somebody you’d want watchin’ your back. I heard he was a former Delta Force leader who came back from tours of duty to become a homicide detective in Miami. He supposedly had the highest conviction rate in the history of the department. But something happened down there, and he left.”

  Garner looked up from his iPad and asked, “What happened?”

  “Don’t know for certain. I think he was asked to leave … sort of a Dirty Harry kinda thing. His boat showed up one foggy morning in the marina. They say he paid a year’s rent for his slip, and then no one saw him for months. I heard he lives in a cabin somewhere out in the boonies on the St. Johns River. A good friend, Nick Cronus, who knows the guy well, said he’ll take cases only if he feels you’ve gone the traditional route and didn’t get help.”

  “Who is this man?” Jessica asked.

  The officers arrived. Two men in their mid-twenties. Short haircuts. Police radios on their thick belts crackling with staccato noise. Roland leaned closer to Joe and Jessica, lowering his voice. “Guy’s name is O’Brien … Sean O’Brien.”

  SEVENTEEN

  I listened as Wynona paused, looking out across the wetlands, her thoughts as distant as the flock of white herons at the edge of the horizon. She stared into the outlying vista of sawgrass, island hammocks thick with cabbage palms, where marshes and blue sky became one at the curvature of the earth. Most of the tourists were now gone, heading to alligator and snake shows, some people strapping into swamp buggies or airboats for a cursory trip into the edge of the unknown, the illusion of an exploration into an alien world.

  Wynona looked at me. “Sam Otter is more than a medicine man or a healer. He’s very spiritual and wise. He adapted parts of Christianity into the Seminole religion because he saw strong parallels in both, focusing on one god, the Breathmaker as he calls God. A lot of the annual Green Corn Dance is a spiritual event. As a people, the Seminole were never conquered. Never signed a peace treaty even after three bloody wars with U.S. Army troops through the 1800s. Although my dad was Irish, I feel a lot of Seminole in my blood or my heart. But I don’t have that indomitable spirit.” She paused and sipped her coffee, Max snoozing on the chair beside us, a soft breeze coming over the marshlands with the citrus scent of blooming water lilies.

  “Why do you say that? You are definitely a survivor.”

  “But I’m not a warrior. There’s a difference, Sean. Surviving can often be because of forced circumstances, situations beyond your control. At that point, it can be a fight or flight scenario. The indomitable spirt that is the legacy of the Seminole probably goes back to the time Osceola sat at the peace treaty table, looked at the treaty, which had a condition incorporated in it that the Seminole be relocated from Florida to Oklahoma. Rather than sign it, he brought his knife down hard into the center of the proposed agreement, pinning it to the wooden table. A few years later, meeting under a white flag of truce, Osceola and some of his men were surprised, jumped, and taken as prisoners. He was thrown into an Army prison cell where he died of an infection. I may share his last name, but I’m not sure the valor is there. I’m sorry for venting. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. There was a suicide on the rez. A teenage girl. Cyber bullied. She took an overdose of oxycodone.”

  I said nothing for a moment, the high-pitched faltering crow of a rooster beyond the tree line of palms. “I’m sorry to hear that. Wynona, that night a few years ago, when you and your partner kicked down the front door of a house in a Detroit suburb to stop an insane man from killing his teenage daughter … that was and is one of the best examples of valor and fearlessness I’ve ever known.”

  She leveled her eyes at me. “A lot of that had to do with the screams from a teen girl coming through our earpieces. We had no choice.”

  “You did have other choices. You could have called for backup. Brought in SWAT. You didn’t have to charge in there, not knowing whether you’d be shot as soon as that locked door was kicked open.”

  “I’ve replayed it in my mind, even in a strange, slow-motion scenario, too many times. Could I do that again? I often ask myself that question. The single round from my gun killed the deranged father. The other seven rounds I pumped into his body had nothing do with defending his mortally wounded daughter. It had everything to do with my rage. That’s not heroism. My partner was later murdered in a revenge killing because of that. I’m still suspicious and leery of almost everyone I meet. I’ve allowed that horrible night and its consequences to further define me and I regret that.”

  I said nothing, allowing Wynona to vent and have someone listen who deeply cared about what she was saying. After a half minute, she leaned back in her chair and said, “Could be that I’m dealing with some sort of post-traumatic stress. I don’t know. Most days it’s never a real issue. Other times, it rises up when I least expect it. A smell can trigger it. A certain sound. Even a color, like the color of that kitchen in the house that night.” She smiled. “Maybe I should hang out with Sam Otter and learn more about the laid-back world of the elders. But I have a job to do, catching bad guys. And we have our share of them on the rez. Not only Big Cypress, but the other four in Florida. Your thoughts, Doctor O’Brien?” She smiled.

  I met her eyes. “It doesn’t take a psychologist to see you’ve gone through hell and back. Not only that night in Detroit, but the afternoon in the parking lot of a deserted banana warehouse when we were facing Dino Scarpa and some of the Miami mafia. You persevered, you won.”

  “And I took a bullet for it. If it weren’t for you pulling me out of that dark rabbit hole, I wouldn’t be here having lunch in the Gator Café today. It’s the little things in life.” She pursed her lips and then half smiled. She placed one hand on her stomach, as if she felt pain.

  “Are you hurting?” I asked.

  “No
, I’m fine. Must be the fry bread.” She sipped her coffee. “We put bad guys and their evil out of commission, and the world is a finer place for it. That’s why I studied criminology. I just followed my heart. And the career, at least what’s left of it, met me along the road to perdition. Unlike legendary Osceola, I don’t consider myself as a warrior. I’m more of a strategist, trying to deliver a checkmate to those who make it their career to hurt others. But it’s always a trade-out. A crossroads where your soul is trying to remain intact because it’s all you have left.”

  “Everyone has an Achilles’ heel. There are no perfect knights. There will always be a weak or a rusty spot in the armor we try to put around us. Everyone, to some degree, becomes the sum of our circumstances, the hairline cracks that are the scars of survival. Maybe these cracks are not always visible on the outside. But the inside, where it counts, where our moats and drawbridges exist to defend us. We just have to remember not to become a prisoner in our own castle.”

  She smiled, her eyes filled with depth and radiance. She said, “The compromise is to remain vulnerable. That’s not always easy, Sean. If I’m in my castle, I’m going to be perched in the tallest spire, glass of wine, gazing out over the land. Not that I need rescuing, mind you. I don’t. But if a wayward knight like you comes wandering along on your horse, well, I’d be the first to see you on the horizon. I’ve missed you.” She reached out and touched my hand.

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  She looked at the orchids on the table. “You know, my birthday is still twelve days away.”

  “Just like the twelve days of Christmas, maybe you’ll get a gift each day leading up to the big day.”

  She laughed. “As long as there are no turtle doves or a partridge in a pear tree, I’m good with that.” She paused, stared at one of the orchids, then looked back at me. “I’ve never had a bucket list, per se by the definition of a ‘to do’ list before-you-die kind of thing. But that trip with you and little Max aboard the sailboat, Dragonfly, would have been at the top of the list, if I’d ever made one. I still think about that, our slow trek back from the Bahamas, stopping at the little islands that didn’t even have names. They sure have staying power in my mind. I think about them often.”