Dreams of Paradise

by R. B. Conroy

  “Of course, my father raised cattle and sometime they get sick or injured and we have to shoot them. I learned how to shoot a pistol at a very young age.”

  “Good.” Willie leaned in front of Tito and pushed the button on the glove box and opened it. He reached inside and pulled out his shiny .38 pistol with the silencer attached. He kept it below window level and laid it on his lap.

  Tito sneered, “Nice gun. Where did a fool like you get a gun like this?”

  Willie snickered, “I have my ways.”

  Tito thought for a moment and then went on, “I want to get this thing over quickly. The whole thing makes me jumpy.”

  “I know, I know, but we have to wait for a few days to be certain that the new will has been prepared and signed. The attorney told Dr. Stone it would take a day or two to prepare the will, so I think to be safe, we should aim for next Saturday night. Dr. Stone and mom always play golf on Saturday and then they go to dinner with their rich friends. She doesn’t stay over on Saturdays because he goes to church on Sunday morning and Mom’s not into church, so Saturday would be our best bet. I will keep my eyes and ears on the ground just in case there is a change in their plans.”

  “That’s about a week man, I will be on, how you say? ‘Pins and needles’ for a week.” Tito gave Willie a nasty stare.

  “Low-rider, Dude, just think about that beautiful Impala sitting in front of your house in Oxford.” Willie threw his arm over Tito’s seat and leaned toward the backseat and lifted up an empty shoebox. His sudden move startled the jumpy Tito, who jerked back, fist doubled.

  “Calm down man! I’m just getting the shoebox that I brought from home. You can put the gun in it and nobody will see it when you take it to your truck. He opened the shoebox and laid the .38 inside. “It’s fully loaded and ready to go. These things never misfire, so I would just hide it somewhere until you need it. If you try to practice shooting it, or something like that, it might raise red flags.”

  “You sure afraid of those red flags,” Tito sneered sarcastically.

  “Can’t be too careful. We don’t want a bunch of cops on our ass.” He jabbed the shoebox toward Tito. “Here, it’s all yours for now man, but I want it back. It’s a damn good gun.”

  Tito snatched the box from Willie. “I hide it in my room. Nobody ever goes in my room.”

  “Let’s plan to go out for drinks next Friday night. We can meet at my place at 6:30 and go over all the final details. We’d better hold the cell phone calls down for now. We can do a few because we know each other, but we don’t want to do a bunch of them because that might….”

  Tito interrupted, “I know, raise a red flag.”

  Willie chucked, “Right.”

  Tito’s face suddenly drained of all expression, his eyes locked on Willie. “You are working me because you know what my dream is. I am no fool. I know what you are doing, but I’m warning you gringo, if you screw me out of this money, you are a dead man and I will shoot you with your own fucking gun.”

  Tito’s eyes bore into Willie. He had never seen such a frightening stare. He felt warm under his arms and beads of perspiration popped out on his forehead, “I’m not that stupid.”

  Tito held his wicked stare for what seemed an eternity. Then he pushed the door handle down, the door cracked open. A broad smile spread across his face, “See you Friday.”

  Still numb with fear, Willie mumbled, “Okay.”

  Chapter 32

  The sturdy shovel bounced in the bed of Pedro’s old truck. “Frickin’ potholes,” Tito groused, laying his hand on the heavy shovel to steady it. The boys were on their way to lay sod at a recently constructed house in the fast developing southern section of The Villages. It took three of them to lay sod, so boss Jesus was joining them today. The back of the bed banged against Tito’s shoulders as the old truck wove its way through the potholes on the road near their house in Oxford. Jesus should ride back here, he would be more careful, Tito thought.

  Tito hated being relegated to the bed of the truck. It was humiliating, but Jesus insisted that there was not room for three in the smallish cab, so on the rare occasions when the three of them worked together, Tito was sent to the back. Alone and with a few minutes to think, he started to reflect on the deadly pact he had made with Willie the night before. Next Saturday would be here before he knew it. A bolt of fear shot up his spine just thinking about it. The enormity of the situation was starting to set in on him.

  Tito always felt that people underestimated his intelligence. Even Jesus and Pedro thought of him as just a tough macho guy, strong and resilient, but not very smart. What people didn’t know was that back in his school days in Mexico, Tito had been one of the brightest kids in the school, doing well in both reading and mathematics. His teacher used to tell his father that he was a “smart boy” and that learning came easy for him. Tito always shrugged off such compliments, feeling that it made him look like a sissy boy. What Tito wanted was for the other kids to fear him, to think of him as the toughest kid in school. This seditious attitude carried on into adulthood with Tito using street talk and gutter language in his day-to-day conversations with people instead of invoking the broad vocabulary he had learned as a boy while reading himself to sleep late at night in the tiny bedroom he shared with his brother in Mexico. The result was that others thought of him as a tough physical man with limited intellect.

  Tito knew that Willie was no different than anyone else. Tito could tell by the way he talked to him that Willie also thought of him as dumb and gullible. He resented the way Willie treated him, yet he still had agreed to kill a man for him. Tito didn’t think of himself as an evil person or a hard core hit man, and he wasn’t stupid, so why, he had asked himself so many times over the past twenty-four hours, had he agreed to do such an egregious act? The downside was huge--one screw up and Tito’s life would never by the same. He could end up spending the rest of his life in a United States prison being assaulted by the other prisoners. Then why? Why had he decided to do this? After much soul searching, the answer was simple. It was all about respect. In his distorted view of reality, killing Dr. Stone was a way for him to gain the respect and dignity that he so desperately craved. Beaten and degraded by a brutal father back in Mexico, he had journeyed to America to start anew, but his new life in the United States had not given him the sense of worth he so desperately wanted. A dark skinned man riding around in the back of an old pick-up is a piece of shit, he thought.

  He felt that he still wasn’t getting the respect he deserved. An illegal in the United States could never dream of going to college, getting a high paying job, or owning a beautiful home. Without citizenship, the best he could hope to do was make enough money to buy some nice clothes at Kohl’s or Beall’s, get a cell phone, share a house with a bunch of other people and start sending part of his weekly check back to his family in Mexico. There was one exception to this rule--a car. If he scrimped and saved enough money, he could buy a car--a used Olds Cutlass or vintage Chevy Impala and customize it. He and all of the other Latinos called such cars low-riders.

  Tito envied the guys with low-riders. They were the big studs in the Latino community. Everybody knew who had the cool cars. Pretty girls giggled and jumped up and down at the very sight of the shiny cars. Their eyes went wide at the sight of the front ends of the cars bouncing up and down. Every Saturday night, a parade of customized cars cruised along the streets of the many Latino communities in Central Florida with their mufflers popping and front ends jumping up and down. Tito desperately wanted to be driving one of those cars, to be the guy everybody looked up to and respected. He remembered how he and his sisters would gather around the big stone fireplace in their hut back in Mexico and ogle the pictures of the fancy cars sent to them by Pedro. Tito dreamed of someday going to America and owning such a car. Even now, he would lay in bed at night and visualize himself behind the wheel of his own low-rider, smiling and waving at all the pretty girls.

  Since arriving in America, Ti
to had learned how difficult it was for someone as lowly as him to buy a car. Without citizenship and a valid driver’s license, he couldn’t get a loan from a bank, so the only way to buy a car was with cold hard cash. The Latinos in the area knew the auto dealers who would sell to illegals and there were several, but they had to show up with the cash. There was no credit available.

  Most of the guys who had the cool cars were citizens and were able to go to the local bank and get a loan, but it would take years for Tito to gain his citizenship and even then he didn’t make enough money to afford a big car payment. Only the guys like Jesus, who owned their own business, could afford to buy a nice car. There was talk among the Latinos that the politicians were trying to bend the rules so illegals could get a driver’s license, but that might take years and he still didn’t make enough money. Tito hated to admit it to himself, but Willie had given him the only way to his dream. It would be a risky and dangerous undertaking, but it would get Tito the cash he needed to get his own low-rider.

  The old truck accelerated through an intersection belching out a cloud of black smoke in its wake. Tito covered his mouth with his T-shirt and waved the smoke away from his face. “Bastard!” he groused, glaring through the back window at Jesus. The black pungent cloud invading his space made Tito even more determined to fulfill his dream. He was sick and tired of being the low man on the totem pole.

  A smidgen of a grin crossed Tito’s face. He never expected a low-life like Willie to come up with something as big as this. He thought back to the first time he had a conversation with Willie. It was out in the yard at Dr. Joe’s. Willie had stepped out the backdoor to shake the water out of a freshly cleaned paint brush. Tito was nearby replacing broken landscaping bricks. Willie initiated the exchange by attempting to make small talk with him. Tito was suspicious of gringos, so he didn’t say much to him at first, but Willie persisted and soon they were talking about the one thing they had in common--their enjoyment of strip clubs.

  Tito wasn’t at all impressed by Willie with his pasty skin and watery eyes, but he saw in Willie an avenue to the many white chicks that hung out at the local clubs. A few days later, the two of them were talking out in the yard and agreed to go clubbing together on the following weekend. As a result of this unholy alliance forged one hot afternoon on the well-manicured lawn of a rich man in The Villages, the ruggedly handsome Tito was soon bedding down with some of the hottest white chicks around and he loved it. Willie had opened up a whole new world of sex and drugs to him. Tito liked what Willie was showing him, but he had little respect for Willie and thought of him as a pathetic self-absorbed druggie who sponged off his mother. Nevertheless, Tito was smart enough to understand that his avenue into the white man’s world would have to be with a low rent guy like Willie. The solid white guys with good jobs and big pedigrees wouldn’t dream of hanging with a dark skinned lawn worker like Tito. And even though he despised Willie, his unusual relationship with him was paying more dividends than Tito ever dreamed possible.

  Tito had no illusions about what he was being asked to do, but it didn’t matter to him. He hated the gringos with a passion. The thought of murdering the portly, balding Dr. Stone gave him little pause. He had decided over the past several hours that murdering the doctor was simply a means to an end for him--nothing more. The lowly spic in the back of the truck would soon be driving his own big shiny low-rider along the narrow streets of the heavily Hispanic communities of Casselberry and Azalea Park. The thought of it sent a chill up his spine.

  Suddenly, the driver’s side window squeaked open. Jesus, who always drove Pedro’s truck when they worked together, stuck his head out the window and shouted at Tito, “How you doing back there?”

  “Okay boss, okay.”

  “We have to go to Orlando first and pick up some supplies. It will only take two hours. Hold tight!”

  “What?”

  “You heard me right, two hours.”

  Tito was incensed at the thought of having to bounce around in the bed of the truck at high speeds all the way to Orlando and back. He grabbed the shovel and tossed it against the side of the bed in anger.

  A few minutes later, the window went down again. “Only kidding!” Jesus shouted.

  Tito turned and glowered at his boss through the window. Inside, Jesus and Pedro’s shoulders were shaking with laughter. “Fuck you!” Tito shouted back in a lowered tone.

  “What was that?”

  “I say you fuckin’ funny boss.”

  “I know.”

  Tito watched his boss role up the window and resume his laughter and gesture toward the back of the truck making light of him. Maybe I kill him next! The sullen young Mexican leaned over the side of the bed and hocked a big one that splattered all over the windshield of a car as it whizzed past in the outside lane. Feeling small and humiliated, Tito kicked his feet out and fell back against the bed--so low that no passersby could see the lowly spic in the back of the truck.

  Chapter 33

  Heather leaned down and carefully positioned the noisy drill in the patient’s gaping mouth and began putting the final touches on the amalgam filling. A short time later, she paused and tilted her head left and then right to get a good look at her handy work. Apparently satisfied, she nodded at her dental assistant who was waiting expectantly on the other side of the patient. The assistant carefully removed the cotton from inside the patient’s mouth and then sprayed water around the tooth to remove any lingering debris.

  “Please spit out,” Heather ordered as she snapped the warm drill in its receptacle.

  The elderly gentlemen leaned forward and spit in the porcelain bowl next to the large leather chair.

  Heather smiled warmly, “Well, you’re all set, Mr. Halbert. Better not eat any solid foods for about six hours. Let’s give that filing a chance to set up. Soup or something very soft would be fine in the meantime. No hard candy or nuts.”

  The hydraulic chair lifted, pushing the patient up to a sitting position. “Okay Dr. Wilkins, I’ll be careful.”

  “If you have any sensitivity to hot or cold over the next few days, let me know. That one was pretty close to the nerve.”

  The old man smiled, nodded and climbed gingerly out of the chair, rubbing the small of his back as he ambled toward the receptionist’s office.

  Heather slipped off her rubber gloves and dropped them in the small wastebasket pushed against the wall. “Remember, we have Mrs. Rowe’s bridge first thing in the morning, Cary.”

  Her assistant Cary nodded.

  “Well, let’s call it a day. What do you say?” Heather gave her young assistant a reassuring smile.

  “Sound good, Dr. Wilkins. See you in the morning.”

  “Give that darling little baby of yours a hug for me, will you?”

  “Sure thing, Dr. Wilkins.”

  Heather exited the work station and made the short walk to her small office to try and make a dent in her growing pile of paper work. She fell into the small leather chair next to her cluttered desk and groaned, “I’ve got to get organized.” She picked up her iPhone lying on the pile of papers on the desk top and punched it on and then waited for it to light up. She scanned the bluish screen. There were no new messages since lunch when she had called son, Mark, at school and left him a message reminding him of his trumpet practice after school. Mark hated playing the trumpet and seemed to always get a temporary case of amnesia on the day of his lesson.

  With an hour free until she had to pick up Mark from practice, and tired after a busy day, Heather leaned against the back of the chair and looked out the window at the heavy traffic whizzing by on 441, she wondered where they were all going. As she sat gazing aimlessly at the passing traffic, she once again found herself thinking of her father and his new lady friend, Susan. It seemed like any time she had a free minute her thoughts went back to her father and his constant companion. Heather just couldn’t believe that they were contemplating living together out of wedlock. It had been difficult enough for
her to learn shortly after she and Mark had moved to Florida that her father had started dating someone, but the idea of the two of them moving in together was just more than she could handle. The thought of another woman sharing her mother’s bed with her father was very unsettling. It all just seemed so wrongheaded to Heather.

  Earlier today, during a break between patients, she had thought of calling Susan and discussing the matter with her, but she changed her mind at the last minute. Susan told her that she got off work at the golf course about 4:00 every day, so this might be a good time to call her. She was probably in the car on her way home from work Heather took a deep breath and exhaled. She laid her hand on the phone and began tapping it nervously with her fingers. She quickly lifted the phone as if not wanting to give herself a chance to change her mind and quickly punched the number 7, the newly added speed dial for Susan’s cell number. The two of them had exchanged numbers at the recent cookout.

  Heather could hear Susan’s phone begin to ring on the other end. Her anxiety level began to rise. She sat up, laid her elbows on the desk and pushed the phone firmly against her ear. The phone continued to ring. A part of Heather didn’t want Susan to answer and a part of her did. After the fourth ring, Susan’s voice came on the phone.

  “Hello Heather, is that you?”

  “Yes it is, Susan, how are you today?” It was a little hard for Heather to hear Susan. Susan didn’t have air conditioning in her car and she apparently had the driver’s side window down to get some air in the car. The wind whistling through the open window made it somewhat difficult for Heather to hear.

  “Oh fine, another day at the salt mine, if you know what I mean,” she laughed nervously.

  “I know what you mean, I had a busy one today also.”

  “I’ll bet.” Susan didn’t follow up on her comment, obviously waiting for an explanation as to the reason for the unexpected call.

  “Mark’s at band practice, so I had a free minute and I thought I would give you a quick call.”