He settled back into the bus seat, tipped his LSU cap forward down over his eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
THE END
Rogue Wave
A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller #1
Every hero has a thing. James Bond had his vodka martinis, shaken, not stirred. Sherlock Holmes had his Watson. And Skink had his … well, Skink has a lot of things, you’ll just have to read more about him to find out.
This is about Troy’s thing … the hat.
Part I
Hat Check
“Put one person’s hat on another person’s head.”
-Chinese Proverb
1
Non-Discretionary Spending
Rick Hairre had not known before today that the barrel of a gun tasted like pennies. Or maybe the taste was the coppery tang of his own blood pooling in the crevices of his ever-swelling mouth. He also had not known the butt of a gun felt so heavy and cold when used as a hammer on one’s head. He guessed he would probably lose most of the teeth he’d spent so much money on veneering prior to the last election cycle, and wondered if he’d ever get a chance to see his dentist again—an odd longing—to see the dentist.
As the current Vice-Chairman of the 2012 Murrell’s Inlet’s Board of Directors, he counted his acquisition of funding in excess of seven million dollars for the Tourism Conservation & Wetland Education Project as his crowning achievement. It was a private deal, with several under-the-table understandings. All parties to the deal would remain anonymous, and a small fee of a half million dollars would be deposited directly into another account of his choosing for managing the deal with ... discretion.
But beyond his selfish interests, the money would provide the local community with informational pamphlets, catchy bumper stickers, kids coloring books, and rental home refrigerator magnets discussing and educating tourists about the delicate ecosystem at work in his precious inlet home.
Counting the zeroes on the check helped him stomach the fact the money had come from the nearby Consolidated Paper Mill. Naturally, the check had come with an understanding—Rick would bury any mention of the pollution the independent environmental scientists had discovered traveling downstream from the mill.
The mill’s owner had channeled the money through a governmental sounding company and encouraged Rick to say he’d procured a federal grant for the work. With this cover story, he’d soon be rising above Vice-Chairman.
As the blood trickled from his nose, he vaguely wondered if the two hooded men interrogating him suspected that a completely untraceable cashier’s check with a seven and six zeroes was tucked away in his Outback Tea Stained straw cowboy hat. Another thought occurred to him through his throbbing haze of pain; what if these two men had been sent by the mill owner to collect the check and get rid of any evidence of the deal—namely Rick. But that didn’t make any sense. The deal had just been made, and everyone was happy to go along with the stipulations of said deal.
Okay, happy was a stretch. But when Rick had chosen the life of a politician, he’d been too green to know the lower tier guys in local governments made little if any in the way of salaries. Some were even volunteer posts. Most were only in it for the power. He smiled wanly at that last thought ... what power did the Vice-Chairman of the 2012 Murrell’s Inlet’s Board of Directors actually have? Not much.
But his acquisition of these funds—however ill-gotten—would’ve gone a long way to further his ambitions. And he’d long since given up being selfish in that regard. He was in it for his daughter. He thanked God he’d had the foresight to wire his half a million straight into her account. He smiled at the thought of her the next time she checked her balance, yet he ached at the likelihood he wouldn’t be around to explain the huge addition of funds to her.
The Outback Tea Stained straw cowboy hat he wore had been a gift from her long ago. She’d only been six or seven at the time and thought the hat was just perfect for her dad. And though it was somewhat out of character for a short, pudgy bald man to wear such a thing, he wore it proudly. As he struggled to maintain consciousness, he couldn’t remember why he’d folded the check and slipped it into the band of his hat behind the colorful peacock feather perched there, but there it remained.
Rick retraced his steps back to the meeting at the mill and sorted through what he could remember of the conversation, but nothing struck him as sinister. He’d walked out after shaking hands with the mill’s owner, and there had been smiles all around. His last text to his daughter (a newly acquired skill for him) had said he’d be stopping by for dinner. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what had prompted his sudden kidnapping outside Lee’s Inlet Kitchen and was even more unsure why they had smashed the butt of what appeared to be an AK-47 against his face and sending his beloved hat skidding across the floor. He would’ve handed over the check had they just asked! He’d tried to tell them that, but his efforts to speak were hampered by his crushed jaw.
His dinner—Lee’s homemade clam chowder—exploded violently from his stomach with the pain from the first wicked blow to his skull, and he was still retching as they hovered around him whispering to each other.
“Where is it, mate?” one of the hooded men growled in a strange accent—maybe Australian, or South African?
Rick opened his mouth to answer, but all that came out was more of his favorite from the appetizer menu at Lee’s.
Apparently, that was an unacceptable answer, as the man’s fist slammed into the top of Rick’s head, dislodging his expensive European hairpiece. Guaranteed to stay on in a hurricane, my ass, he thought as the toupee flopped to the ground.
His baldpate glistened brightly as warm blood began flowing down into his eyes. His thoughts began to jumble wildly through his life and he saw himself in his high school senior pictures with already thinning hair. After a few unsuccessful attempts at a comb-over, he just clipped it closer and closer to his head. By the summer of his senior year, he was a nineteen-year-old bald guy. It’d been bad enough that he was born with a build like that of Danny DeVito and not as good-looking as most of the guys he’d played with on the football team, but his last name was Hairre. Hairre, for God’s sake. With a name like that, and a chance to re-invent himself upon starting college, he’d sought out remedies to his ever-expanding baldness. Since the summer between high school and his freshman year at Clemson University, he’d been a closet member of the Hairre Club for Men.
Before the chocolate-brown head of hair—woven strand-by-strand—had become part of him, his high-school classmates often asked if he’d shaved it because of sickness or cancer treatments; sometimes he said yes. Years later, Susan, his wife of fourteen anniversaries, had succumbed to the pancreatic version of his lie. When he visited her in the hospital, he would remove his hairpiece and be bald with her as she suffered. He wondered if his current hair-jarring episode was karma circling back around for another go at him.
As the images faded from his mind, he wasn’t sure if he was losing consciousness, the blood was clouding his eyes, or his thick-rimmed glasses had finally shattered away, but his vision began to swim and fade. His head lolled down to touch his chest and he thought with sadness that he would never get the blossoming red stains out of his seersucker sport coat. God, he loved that jacket ... just like Matlock.
As if on cue, thug number one ripped the front of the jacket open and shoved his hands down into the inside pockets.
“No,” Rick moaned, but no one was paying him any attention—just like no one paid attention to him at the city council board meetings. But all that would change when he delivered the seven million dollar check.
His view of the world was dimming rapidly when the man tore into his pants pockets, scattering the assorted contents on the concrete floor of ... wherever they had taken him. A crumpled toddler photo of his now grown stepdaughter slipped out of the hooded man’s grasp and hit the floor. A spatter of blood from Rick’s forehead dripped down onto the picture. Everything was in slow motion now. He
knew his end was near.
He wanted to cry out, take my wallet, take my ‘56 Dodge Royal convertible ... take anything you want ... take the check, for God’s sake, just let me live to tell my sweet girl I still love her! But his wrecked jaw could only mumble and spew blood.
The check! In his final thoughts, he wondered how they’d missed it. His eyes flitted to the forgotten cowboy hat lazily tilting to and fro under a nearby metal table. And that’s when the darkness ended Rick Hairre’s tenure as the 2012 Vice Chairman of the Murrell’s Inlet’s Board of Directors.
2
Troy’s Crick
Troy Clint Bodean stood motionless on the rickety wooden dock. The sun had risen slowly above him and the heat of the day was just beginning to warm his skin. He had his brand new and ridiculously expensive Loki Lightning Redfish Rod propped against his left thigh, and his right hand gently tested the silvery web of line for any sign of resistance. He dabbed a trickle of sweat from his eyes with the light blue bandana around his neck and pushed his salt-stained LSU cap back on his head.
Two hours of daylight had brought him absolutely nothing; not a tremble, not a bite, not even a nibble. Damn you, Debby, he thought while rolling a toothpick back and forth between his teeth.
The tropical storm that grew only slightly above the hurricane designation—dubbed Debby, by the World Meteorological Organization —had plowed through Northern Florida and churned up the East Coast, leaving Pawleys Island with nothing to catch but a sunburn. But no one else was out, so he thought the few fish that may have been left in the storm’s wake might be hungry and food might be scarce. It was looking more and more as if he really was the only one out today ... including fish.
Hurricane Debby, he thought, was a perfect name for the storm, just like his ex-girlfriend, Debby Robinson, in Vegas. She too had crashed into (and out of) his life and left nothing but baggage and debris in her wake. Good riddance, he thought as he chewed a little harder on the toothpick.
Troy had seen a great many things in his life. He’d had a relatively incident-free tour as an Apache AH-64 pilot in Afghanistan that ended abruptly with a shrapnel-ruined right ACL. Upon rehabilitation and return to the states, he’d learned his only surviving relative, his youngest brother Ryan, had been honorably discharged (reason unknown) and disappeared. Troy had been shot at all over kingdom come, took a hit to the knee that almost cost him his leg, and survived hell on earth ... only to find that he had no one to come home to—no friends, no family, no nothing.
Down and out and alone, he’d grabbed one of the few vocational opportunities offered to an injured war vet—bartending in a shady Las Vegas strip joint, The Peppermint Hippo. More than a few of his war buddies were patrons of such establishments, drinking and laughing loudly to drown out the sound of gunfire in their heads. His own tour had been short enough that he never heard those phantom screams.
After a few desperate months of searching for work, he’d taken the job of D.J./bouncer. Lucky for him, the gig included the apartment above the club that was little more than a one-room loft with a bug-ridden bed, a futon, a dorm-room refrigerator, and a hot plate. After the thumping stripper tunes finally fell quiet around five in the morning, he often ate lukewarm SpaghettiO’s out of the can then slept on the futon. More than once, a strung-out stripper or two had crashed in his bed—without him. A hero’s welcome indeed.
But Debby had been different, or so he thought. She wasn’t called Cinnamon or Candy or Porsche on stage, but Gidget ... a name he fondly attached to the movie starring Sandra Dee. Her music had always been rather tame as well, leaning more toward Bon Jovi than Marilyn Manson.
He’d never seen her touch alcohol, or any other mind candy handed out in the alley back behind the club. She always made the customer happy without crossing whatever professional line there could be between a stripper and her mark. When she’d asked to stay with him, it’d been because her Mercedes had refused to start after her shift, and she wasn’t going to let Slick Mick’s Quick Towing screw it up like she’d seen done to so many abandoned cars in the club’s gravel lot. Even if it was only a C-class, it deserved better than that.
He’d offered her a beer and they’d finished what was left of a Longboard twelve-pack by seven-thirty. They hadn’t even slept when the Mercedes dealer’s flatbed truck came to rescue her ride. In the glow of their buzz, she’d grabbed his cellphone and typed in her number.
“You’d look good with a beard,” she’d said, and brushed her hand on his then only stubbly cheek and climbed into the tow truck sporting a pair of his gym shorts and an old LSU hoody.
When he finally worked up the nerve to call her, he hadn’t known she’d stepped out on the balcony of her extravagant condo atop the MGM to take his call and set up their first date. He also hadn’t known her husband had been in the living room of said condo watching the races and checking his numbers.
A couple of dates later, a sudden, unexpected, and oddly quiet, not to mention awkward meeting outside her condo’s bathroom door with her Mafioso-looking husband, had led to an embarrassing towel-only run through the casino floor of the MGM.
Teddy (the Mafioso husband) had come to The Peppermint Hippo escorted by Vinnie and Louie—apparently, those names really did exist for Italian bodyguards—and politely asked him to leave Las Vegas if he knew what was good for him. Which was exactly what Troy had been planning to do anyway. His bag was already packed.
He took the 93 down to Kingman and hopped on I-40 and traveled east as far as he could hitchhike. When he got to Memphis two weeks later, he turned south on 55 and headed back home to Louisiana. He had learned to drink to pass the time during that long and crazy trip and spent the next ten alcohol-dazed years on and off shrimping boats off the coast of Louisiana. He made a lot of money and drank most of it up. Bought a boat of his own and became a bona fide businessman ... with a bona fide drinking problem. An alcohol-induced near-death experience in an overturned boat shook him out of that daze and he sold his boat. It made him enough money to set him up nicely for a while and keep him from hitchhiking to his new destination, wherever that would turn out to be.
He took the first Greyhound bus out of town and left the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal in his rearview.
Hours later, when he stepped off the bus into the hot sun, he was in Litchfield Beach, South Carolina. He spent the last of his money on an old, dilapidated beach house on Pawleys Island, and had just enough left over to get a very nice fishing rod and reel.
Watching the lazy creek water swim past his wooden dock, he thought he’d just about seen it all. As he watched the abandoned twelve-foot aluminum Jon boat drift in, he knew he’d been wrong.
The boat itself was quite unremarkable. Hurricane Debby was probably responsible for the un-piloted craft’s lonely drift down the creek. It was rusted and salty, but only looked to be four or five years old. It was bluish gray aluminum with only a trolling motor attached on the back. Behind the black identification numbers SC-1971-LD on the side, it had large, sun-peeled green letters, saying: RENT ME.
It bumped against the dock he was fishing from and he put his right foot out to push it back out into the current. Given his past with bad juju floating into his life, he was going to let this one drift into someone else’s path. That’s when his eye landed on the hat: a beautiful, straw cowboy hat, its owner nowhere to be seen. He looked slowly up and down the creek.
When he was certain he was alone, Troy reached down into the boat and picked up the hat. It was worn, but in good shape; no holes, pretty clean, and expensive looking. It had a brightly colored plume of some kind stuck into the band on the back. Peacock maybe, he thought. He sniffed the inside of the hat. Is that ... Old Spice? It looked well taken care of and smelled clean, so he felt assured there were no bugs in it.
He gently laid the Loki rod down on the dock, removed his ragged LSU cap, and folded it into his back pocket. The cowboy hat fit perfectly and rested neatly above his Costa Del Mar Pescador sunglasses. W
ith his eyes so well shaded, he saw the immense shadow of what had to be a thirty-pound red drum swim out from under the dock.
That’s a dang big fish, he thought as he saw it jerk his line and yank his ridiculously expensive rod and reel flying into the creek. Suddenly, the realization hit him, and he leaped into action.
“Hey,” he shouted and jumped into the water after it. The silver barrel of the reel glinted and he lunged after it, but the fish had other plans and took off. Unfortunately, the line was not reeling itself out, but holding fast and dragging his beautiful Loki away from him. He cursed himself for leaving the tension so high. He half-swam, half-crawled forward in the shallow water knowing he must look like he was drowning—or attempting a very awkward butterfly stroke.
He plunged his head under and squinted into the distance as the glint of chrome winked and rushed away from him into the dark water. He planted his feet on the bottom and lunged. His bad knee caught what could only be described as a blade of rock jutting out of the creek bottom and pain knifed into his leg. He ignored what he felt sure must be another tear to his ACL, and plunged forward.
He stuck his head up, and with a gasp of air and a quick scan downstream, he again leaped toward the rapidly escaping rod and felt the end of it tickle his fingertips. But then it was gone. He lurched again, blindly flailing after it, but his bad knee jerked him back in a shock of pain. He limped to a standing position, now harder to hold with one good leg, and peered into the current. There was no sign of the fish, the rod or the reel.
“Dangit!” He slapped the surface of the water.
He lifted his leg to examine the damage to his knee ... no cuts, just a few minor abrasions. His knee was starting to turn purple, but it didn’t look like he’d done anything more than bruise both it and his pride. He sat back down in the cool water; it felt good on his aching joints.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 9
