Dreams of Paradise

by R. B. Conroy

  “Shit! Willie barked. “I hit my head on the steering wheel.” He rubbed his forehead vigorously.

  “Get your hands down, Willie. This could be the cops!”

  The cluttered interior of the old Civic started to fill with light as the headlights got closer. Both men scooted a little further down and held their collective breaths. Tubs could hear his heart pounding. He glanced over at a stoic Willie, staring blankly at the dashboard. Soon Tubs could hear the sound of gravel crunching under the tires of the vehicle as it drove slowly past. It seemed like an eternity before the light passed through the interior of the car. Tubs jerked his head over the back of the seat to watch the red tail lights fade into the distance. He sat up in his seat and scanned the area around the nearby American Legion Post. There was nothing moving--it was quiet again. “Damn! That was close!” he exclaimed.

  Willie was once again rubbing his head. He pulled his hand away and turned toward Tubs. “Look at this bump on my head. I hit the steering wheel really hard.”

  “Shit Willie, we’ve got more important things to worry about than some little bump on your head.”

  Willie frowned and quickly rubbed his forehead one last time.

  Suddenly Tubs’ eyes shot through the windshield toward the back door on the beige cinderblock building. “Someone’s coming out the side door, Willie! Is that him?”

  Willie zeroed in on the man coming out of the door. “Yea, it’s him. He’s carrying a black money bag and according to Scottie, it’s stuffed full of cash--maybe three or four thousand dollars.”

  “What the hell does this Scottie know about it?”

  “He’s a member here. He told me he used to be the guy who took the money to night drop on Saturday night. He told me about what time he left the building and everything.”

  “Why would he tell YOU something like that?”

  “He’s my mother’s cousin; he doesn’t know I’m a druggie.”

  Tubs laughed nervously, “Hell, I thought everybody knew you were a druggie.”

  During his bantering with Tubs, Willie was keeping a close eye on the man with the money. “He just locked the door. Now he’s going to walk to his car at the rear of the building. He’s outside and open game now.”

  Tubs’ face turned white, “He’s kind of old, Willie, he looks like someone’s grandpa or something, maybe we shouldn’t…..”

  Willie interrupted his cohort and his eyes went wide. They had a wild look in them, like an animal on the prowl. “He’s away from the door, let’s move in!” he commanded.

  “Oh, shit! I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Tubs growled.

  Willie turned the key, the engine groaned to a start. He grabbed the gear shift and crammed it frantically into gear. The small engine roared into action, the Civic lurched forward with its bald tires spinning on the loose dirt on the street. It shot across the street and bounced over the shallow curb, loose change and water bottles bounced out of the center console. The speeding car raced toward the solitary figure walking casually toward the back of the building.

  Tubs’ head bounced off the ceiling. He held tightly to his .38, his eyes were wide-eyed with fear. “He’s a big son-of-a-bitch, Willie! He’s not going down easy!”

  The man with the money heard the car approaching and spun around. The headlights on the Civic revealed stark terror on the man’s face. He started to run awkwardly toward the back of the building to the safety of his car.

  “Does he have a gun?” Tubs shouted.

  “No. Scottie says they don’t need a gun in Leesburg. They’ve never been robbed.”

  Tubs’ eyes went wide as saucers. “Hell, slow down, Willie, so I can jump out and rob him!”

  Willie punched the accelerator to the floor, he had a blank look on his face.

  “Back off, Willie! You’re gonna run over him!”

  The man running for his life stumbled and fell. Face down on the ground, he turned toward the car, shielding his eyes from the bright headlights. His face was full of terror.

  “No, Willie!”

  The car’s tires banged into the fallen man and there was a sickening thud. The speeding car bounced over his thick body, flew into the air and crashed to the ground. Willie slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop on the matted grass near the back of the building. Willie grabbed the gun out of Tubs’ hand and knocked the car door open with his shoulder and jumped out. He raced toward the fallen man, gun in hand. The man was groaning, his face was covered in blood. Willie lifted his gun and jammed it against the fallen man’s forehead preparing to fire. Suddenly Willie felt something very hard crash into the back of his head, he fell to the ground with the unfired gun still in his hand.

  An angry Tubs stood over Willie with clenched fists. “I didn’t bargain for this, you bastard.” He grabbed his gun out of Willie’s hand and pointed it at him. “Let’s get the money and get the hell out of here before I blow you to bits!”

  Not wanting to challenge his angry friend, Willie scrambled over on his hands and knees and grabbed the black money bag from the hand of the fallen man.

  “Let’s go!” Willie shouted as he climbed to his feet. The two men hurriedly jumped back in the car with its engine still running. Tubs looked all around the area to make sure no one had seen them, “I don’t see a soul. We might be okay if you didn’t kill the son-of-a-bitch.” The car bounced over the curb at the street in front of the building and sped away. Soon they were blending into the traffic on Highway 441 and heading back to Orlando.

  Tubs, his face distorted in anger, took a deep breath. “It’s important for us to look normal as hell right now so I have to control myself. If it wasn’t for that, I would be pounding the living shit out of you right now, you stupid bastard!”

  A stoic Willie replied, “Lighten up man, it was just some old man.”

  Tubs eyes glazed over with fury. “Just an old man you say! That old man is somebody’s father, somebody’s grandpa, you sick, demented prick!”

  Sensing Tubs’ anger, Willie backed off, “Okay, okay, so I went a little overboard. I’m sure he’s okay, he was still breathing when we left. Besides, this bag is chock full of cash.” He lifted the bag off the floor in front of him and waved it toward Tubs.

  “Get that out of my face!” Tubs knocked the bag away from him. “For a few thousand bucks we may have killed a man--for a few thousand bucks! I feel sick!” Tubs groaned almost inaudibly.

  * * *

  Willie drove carefully the rest of the way back to Orlando. He was confident they had gotten away with the robbery, even if the old man didn’t make it. There were probably hundreds of green Honda Civics in North Central Florida and when they got back home, he would change out the fake license plate on the back of the car and replace it with the actual plate. Willie had been taken aback by Tubs’ angry outburst and had stayed quiet during the remaining drive, wanting to give Tubs a chance to cool down on the way home. They were almost back to Orlando. He thought this might be a good time to say something to Tubs before they reached his place and didn’t have time to talk.

  “You workin’ tomorrow?”

  Still upset, Tubs had been staring out the passenger side window the entire way back to Orlando, about a forty-five minute drive from Leesburg. Without looking at Willie, he replied softly, “I work every day.”

  “Still second trick?”

  Still holding his gun in his right hand, Tubs fell back against the seat and glared straight ahead. “Cut the small talk, Willie, I’m in no mood for it.”

  Willie flipped on the turn signal and turned onto Fourth Street. They were only a couple of miles from his place. He spoke calmly to his friend, “I think were gonna be okay. Leesburg doesn’t have much of a police force and there are green Honda Civics all over the place.”

  Still unhappy, much of Tubs’ anger had subsided. He tuned and stared at Willie. “Aren’t you worried about that guy? He might be dead.”

  Willie chuckled uneasily, “Oh hell, this little car ain’t gonn
a kill nobody. Anyway, he was still breathing and he moved his arm before we left. He’ll be okay.”

  “Listen to me, you heartless jerk, I never bargained for this. You told me we were going to rob a guy and make a little easy money. I got my faults, but I’m no murderer. After seeing what you did tonight, I know that you are! You’re a mean sick person, Willie, and I don’t want anything to do with you ever again.” He laid back and stared out the windshield again. “I hope and pray that old man is okay, he didn’t look so good to me.”

  Willie was annoyed by Tubs, feeling that he was overreacting. He didn’t particularly like killing people, but he felt he had no choice. Left alive, the man might have been able to identify them. He felt no remorse for what he had done; he felt it was necessary. Willie liked Tubs and wanted to try and patch things up before the night was over. He just had a few minutes. “Hell, I wasn’t trying to kill him, Tubs. I just wanted to knock him out so he couldn’t identify us later. That’s all.”

  Tubs grimaced at the comments and continued to stare straight ahead.

  Willie’s place was just ahead; he turned down the narrow alleyway and headed for his tiny mobile home. He pulled to a stop next to Tubs’ pickup and quickly punched off the lights. He leaned down and snatched the black bag off the floor on the driver’s side. “I don’t see anybody around. It’s pitch black back in here. I’ll just count it out now and give you your half. Nobody will see us.” Willie opened the bag and began counting the stacks of bills. “Looks like they had a good night at the ole Legion tonight.”

  “My ex is about to be thrown out of her apartment for not paying her rent. I don’t want my boy to be out on the street. I need this money so she can pay the rent. If I didn’t need it so bad, I wouldn’t take a dime of this money.” A few minutes later, Willie was done counting the cash from the bag. “There’s $5,760 with what looks like about $20 in loose change. Let’s see, that would be about $2,900 a piece if my math is correct.”

  “Give me $2,800. You drove.” Tubs said curtly.

  Willie counted out twenty-eight hundred dollars and handed it to Tubs.

  Without saying a word, Tubs stuck his gun in his pants pocket, snatched the money from Willie’s outstretched hand, and quickly exited the car. A short time later, a somewhat contrite Willie listened as Tubs started his old truck and drove away.

  Willie watched Tubs’ taillights disappear around the corner at the end of the road. He smirked and grabbed the stack of mostly twenties, “Oh shit, I made a mistake, there was a little over $6,900 here. Oh well, it’s too late now!” He laughed and stuffed the cash back in the black bag. He pulled a rag out from under the front seat and slid out of the Civic with the bag in hand. He strolled casually to the front of the car and aggressively rubbed the traces of blood off the front fender of the Civic. “Time to do a line or two,” he whispered while disappearing into the tiny mobile home.

  Chapter 6

  Tito Melendez worked hard for his money--very hard. Raised near Caborca, Mexico, just over the Mexican border from Tucson, Arizona, he was the oldest of seven children. A man of little means, Tito now lived in a run-down home with two cousins also from Caborca, in the small town of Oxford, Florida. Used to the cooler climate of his home area, Tito hated the climate in Florida, particularly the hot and humid summer months. He hated one thing more than the climate--he hated the white Americans or “Gringos”, as he chose to call them, with a passion.

  Tito’s father, Jose, was a small cattle farmer back in Mexico. As a young man, his father worked in the cotton fields near Caborca with one goal in mind--he wanted to save enough money to buy his own spread, settle down and raise a family. Working from sunup until sundown in the seemingly endless cotton fields that blanketed the rolling hills near Caborca, he eventually saved enough money to realize his dream. At the age of twenty-six, he bought a small two-acre spread just outside of the town and purchased a small herd of cows. A short time later, he married his childhood sweetheart and went about raising a family.

  The first few years were very difficult for Tito’s father. Unsophisticated in the ways of finance, he had underestimated the cost of operating his own business. He was forced to borrow money from a local bank to purchase fencing, feeding and watering troughs, and an old used pick-up truck. In debt and working endless days to make a go of things, his wife Rosita came to him one day and announced that she was pregnant. Nine months later, Tito was born. The arrival of Tito couldn’t have come at a worse time for the already heavily burdened Jose. Not wanting his farm to fail, he demanded that Rosita work long days in the fields, leaving little Tito to fend for himself.

  As the years passed, Jose and Rosita had more children and he was forced to buy some nearby acres and expand the size of his small operation to help pay for the expenses of his growing family. The oldest and strongest of the children, Tito was put to work on the farm at a very young age. Although he was a hard worker, Tito felt like he could never please his father, no matter how hard he worked. Worried and frustrated, Jose always took his aggressions out on his oldest son. A backhand to the face or a punch to the stomach were not uncommon occurrences for the oldest of the Melendez children.

  Not receiving much love or attention from his parents and having to endure long days of hot dirty work and periodic bouts of physical abuse from his father, Tito grew up an angry young man. Twenty-one now, Tito had a menacing look about him. His muscular frame, dark eyes, and square face with thin lips and a broad flat nose, gave off a threatening aura to those around him. Even his four brothers and two sisters were somewhat frightened of their older brother.

  As his mother had feared, one day her powerful son decided that he had suffered enough beatings from his father and fought back. After a particularly long and very hot day on the farm repairing fencing and chasing down a dozen runaway cattle, Jose became angry when Tito stopped at the well for a much needed drink of water. When he saw his son drinking at the well, his eyes filled with rage. Jose leaped off his donkey and ran toward the kneeling young man. Arriving at the well, he lifted his arm and backhanded his son across the face, sending him crashing to the ground. Dazed and disoriented, Tito rolled to his back and looked up at his enraged father who was preparing to administer even more punishment to his vulnerable son. Fighting for survival, Tito rose to his knees and blocked the next punch with the palm of his hand. Holding his father’s fist in his hand, the muscular youngster rose to his feet to confront his father.

  Amazed by the strength of his oldest son, the enraged Jose struggled to free his hand, but to no avail. Years of frustration and pain from the nasty beatings he had endured from his father exploded from deep inside the young man. He let go of his father’s fist, quickly formed a fist of his own and punched his father in the side of his head spinning him around and sending him sprawling to the ground. Filled with overwhelming anger, he quickly jumped to the ground and straddled the family patriarch, punching viciously around the face and head. It wasn’t long before his father’s blue work shirt was soaked in blood and a few front teeth were scattered on the ground.

  Hearing her husband’s screams, Rosita, and the other children who were working in a nearby field, rushed to the scene to try and stop the enraged Tito. His brothers and a sister were able to push Tito off their father just as a screaming and crying Rosita brushed past Tito and fell to the ground to hug and comfort her battered husband. With his hands bloody and his mind racing, a confused Tito, mumbled “I’m sorry” to his family. Then he jumped to his feet and raced from the scene, running and running until he could run no more. Several hours later and totally exhausted, he ducked into a wooded area in the hills near the U.S. border and miles from Caborca and collapsed on the cool damp ground.

  Tito’s grief felt like a heavy quilt over his head as he laid on the cold ground. In Tito’s culture, you never even as much talked back to your parents--you kept your mouth shut and did what you were told. Mexican children would never dream of striking a parent--no matter what the provocat
ion--but that’s what Tito had done just a few hours earlier. He was a marked man for certain. If he attempted to stay in Mexico, he would be hunted down by the Mexican police and thrown in jail where he would spend the rest of his life doing hard labor. His only chance for survival was to escape to the United States and try to start a new life. Fortunately for Tito, English was a mandatory language for the Melendez family. His father went to the livestock auction in Tucson monthly and felt it necessary that all of them should learn to speak English. His father’s demand would come in very handy to Tito as he rushed toward America and freedom.

  Tito rolled to his side on the damp ground and felt his back pocket. “Good,” he mumbled. The border pass that he used when they went to the auction was still in his pocket. He could use it to get across the border, but then he realized that crossing the border in that manner would not be very smart. He felt certain that the officials in Caborca had notified the checkpoints at the border crossings and they would be looking for him. He couldn’t take the chance of going through a checkpoint. He had to come up with another plan. He decided that he would have to cross the border illegally to avoid being captured by the Mexican authorities. He pulled the pass from his back pocket, tore it apart and tossed it into the thick foliage in the forest.

  Tito would leave early in the morning before daylight to avoid detection. When he was younger, Tito had crossed the border illegally a few times with his cousins to visit their uncle who lived near Tucson, so he knew the way. It was imperative that he make it over the border. The aggressive Mexican police could not pursue him if he was across the border, but they would notify the U.S. Border Patrol. Tito, like many Mexicans, knew that the border patrol was undermanned and overworked. He felt that if he could make it over the border, he would have a very good chance of getting past the border patrol and finding safety at his uncle’s house.

  Chapter 7