by Winton, Tom
As we drove back to Wrecker’s beneath a wide, black dome splattered with stars, we didn’t have a whole lot to say to each other. And that was fine with me. With all the toxic thoughts I had circulating in my head, I sure as hell didn’t need Julie laying more pressure on me. But it was inevitable. I knew she’d want answers. Right after we passed through Cudjoe Key and were crossing the dark bridge over Kemp Channel, she turned to me and asked, “What’s going on in there, Sonny? Please tell me what you think you’re going to do about this.”
“Nothing,” I said, then, just as quickly in attempt to undo my lie I added, “I mean I don’t want to talk about it right now. It’s been a long night and I just want to get some sleep.”
Not long later I pulled the van in between our two trailers. The headlights illuminated the woods in back startling an armadillo. It bolted as quickly as armadillos can into the palmettos, and I shut off the engine and had to tap the gas pedal twice again. I started to climb out but then stopped. Julie was just sitting there, looking at me.
“What?” I asked, quizzically.
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Even with my door open it was dead quiet. She just looked across the dark van at me then finally she raised her hand, put it on my shoulder and massaged it. “Don’t go looking for this psycho, Sonny! Please, I’m groveling here, just turn it over to the sheriff’s department.”
“Julie, I don’t know which end is up right now, okay? I’ve got thoughts and ideas buzzing in and out of my head so fast that I can’t make sense out of any of them. My mind’s been like that a lot lately. Nothing stays in there long enough to figure any of it out.”
“Okay, I understand. Get some sleep, but please ... consider turning it over to the police.”
I could tell she wanted to put her arms around me and kiss me. That much I can read from the look in a woman’s eyes. But she didn’t. She just and then got out of the van.
“Do me a favor, “I said to her back, “Call me at the shop tomorrow and let me know how Buster’s doing.”
She stopped for a second, turned around, said, “Sure. Good night,” then turned back around and stepped into her porch.
Chapter 17
The next morning I got two personal phone calls while working at the tackle shop. The first was ten minutes after I’d opened up. It was Cap Forest. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the night at Mugs and Jugs, so I told him how Julie and I found Buster on Stock Island and what ensued afterwards. After filling him in on everything, he said he wanted to tell me a little more about Brock Blackburn. He said there hadn’t been enough time at the strip joint and he hadn’t been in any condition to think straight that night anyway. After that, he told me that he had known an inmate at Raiford who seemed to know quite a bit about Brock Blackburn. Then Cap told me everything he knew.
He said the killer’s long, coarse black hair somehow seemed artificial and that it framed his hard face like a cheap wig. It was a face that hid some horrible stories in its teardrops. There was a horseshoe shaped scar on his right cheek, his nose was crooked at the bridge, and there were always deep, angry creases between his eyebrows. Below those thick black brows were two vacant, forbidding eyes – dead eyes – eyes that conveyed his unnerving ruthlessness.
Cap also went on to tell me that when Blackburn was a kid, his old man often came home drunk to their dilapidated house and liked to give the oldest of his six sons a good pounding. The youngest two boys, none of which bore any resemblance to each other, used to walk unsupervised around the old house either bare-assed naked or in filthy underpants. It seemed there was never any money left for clothes because of the family patriarch’s drinking habit and the payments he made on his new Mercury. As for Blackburn’s mother and older sister, they were no help either. Just like the old man, they were hardly ever home. Most nights they’d be out together, soliciting their bodies. Cap said that although he didn’t know if it were true, there had been a rumor circulating in prison that many nights the mother and daughter would service the same John – together. It seemed they were a tag-team of sorts.
Nevertheless young Brock’s didn’t last forever. They came to an abrupt end on an unusually cold South Florida Christmas Eve. While sitting alone in the darkness of the front room, fifteen-year-old Brock had gotten up the nerve to drink almost two full six-packs of his old man’s Busch beer. Groggy, but with a new-found confidence, he waited for his father to come home. On the floor alongside him there was a cinderblock he’d stolen that afternoon from a construction site out on State Road 84.
*****
It was just shy of midnight when the senior Blackburn pulled his shiny Merc into the driveway. Brock, who had almost fallen asleep by then, snapped to attention when he heard the crunch of gravel beneath wheels and saw slashes of white light cutting through a metal jalousie window he’d left open a crack. Coolly, slowly, he picked up the cement block, and crept to the side of the doorway.
After his father entered the house and closed the door the teenager came at him in the darkness, slamming the heavy block into the back of his neck. Blackburn had told that other inmate in Raiford that when he heard his old man’s neck crack and watched the bastard drop to the floor he felt a strange sense of exhilaration that he’d never felt before. He’d also added that it felt just as good when he then stomped on his father’s chest and felt his ribs splinter under the force of his foot.
Brock Blackburn left home that night, never to return. Two days later, the cops found him sleeping under the bleachers at an elementary school baseball field near downtown Fort Lauderdale. He was sent away to reform school, where he had the very first teardrop tattooed beneath his eye.
After Cap told me all that, I asked him if he knew where Lionel Topper lived. He said it just so happened he did. Less than a year earlier Topper had chartered his boat and paid him with a check. He’d looked at the address on the check and knew it was in a gated community in Key West, a place called “Dolphin Estates”.
Just minutes after thanking him and hanging up the phone I got that second call. I was damn glad for the distraction too. My mind was in a panic. There is no easy way of describing how petrified I was. All I can tell you is that when you know that you just might end up dealing with a cold, heartless lunatic like Blackburn, who enjoys hearing necks snap the way he does, it doesn’t leave a whole hell of a lot of room in your mind for happy thoughts.
“Hello,” I said into the phone, as I sat on the backless stool behind the counter, “Big Time Bait & Tackle.”
“Good morning, Sonny.”
It was Julie. And her tone was about as upbeat as my thoughts were. My palms suddenly moistened and knees started doing that bouncing thing again.
“Are you at the hospital?”
“Yes, I’m here with Pa. Sonny, he looks so old and helpless. He’s been here all night. His white hair is all disheveled, and you can see most of his eyelids. He can barely keep them open. His clothes are rumpled up and there’s a coffee stain from last night right on the front of his tee shirt. He just doesn’t ....”
“Julie,” I interrupted, “how’s Buster?”
“It’s not encouraging. His blood pressure is still way too low, and as you know, he’s got a concussion, broken ribs and that punctured lung. He’s on a life support machine ... still in a coma.”
“What’s the doctor say? Are you telling me he’s not going to come out of this?”
“He’s got an excellent doctor. His name’s Ryerson, best neurologist in the Keys. He said the longer he ... he’s in a coma, the greater the chance he could have brain damage. Sonny, I’m sorry, I’m trying to be strong for Pa, but I’m going to lose it here. I’m going to cry. I can’t help myself.”
“Don’t be silly, Julie. It’s okay. Look, do you want me to close the shop and come down there?”
“No,” she answered with a sniffle now, “it’s alright. There’s nothing you can really do here. It’s just that Buster looks so helpless lying in that bed – all hooked u
p to so many wires and tubes. He looks terrible, Sonny. I’m scared.”
I’d been stroking my chin as Julie had been speaking. Now that she was finished I propped myself up on the stool and, as if a switch had been thrown, the ominous fear I’d been enveloped in suddenly turned into anger. I was pissed – totally fed up with the whole thing.
“I’ll tell you what, Julie,” I snapped into the phone, “right now I’m just inches from getting in my van, going the fuck down there, and blowing away both those bastards – Blackburn and Topper!”
“Sonny,” she pleaded desperately, “don’t be ... ”
“Don’t worry!” I interrupted. “As much as I want to, I’m not going to do anything right this minute. I’m going to sit tight. But I’ll tell you this, and I promise you, if Buster doesn’t come out of this okay, by God I will handle it.”
“Look, let’s not get into that now. Why don’t we take one thing at a time? I still think you and Pa ought to be turning this over to the Sheriff’s Department, but I’m glad you at least decided not to do anything crazy right now. Sonny ... ” she paused then on the other end, as if searching for the words that would follow and lining them up in their proper order, “I think you well know by now that I, I ... well, hell, I think you know that I really care about you. I think you care about me as well. A woman can read those kinds of things. But I also know there’s something standing in your way. I know what it is, Sonny. I wish I could do something to change that, but I can’t. Okay ... there, I said it. I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest for a while now. But please, don’t say anything right now. I don’t want to talk about it. I just wanted you to know that I know.”
I was stunned. Feeling as if I’d just been hit by a mortar round, I leaned back on that stool. If there hadn’t been wooden shelving behind me, I would have gone over backwards. I struggled for the right words to say but had no idea what the hell they would be. Trying to sound as nonchalant as I possibly could, the best I could do was stutter, “Y-Y-Yeah, well ah ... your right. I think the best thing to do about Buster is sit back and see what transpires. Look Julie,” I then lied, “I’ve got to get off the phone now. There’s a customer coming in. I’ll talk to you later, alright?”
“Sure. Would you like to stop over for coffee or a beer when you get home? I mean if you don’t have any plans or anything.”
“How about I stop over for coffee in the morning? I’m dog-tired after last night.”
“Sure, that would be great,” she said, but her words were drenched with disappointment.
Sitting there with the phone to my ear, I thought how the best people always make the poorest liars. And as that ran through my head, I said, “If you hear anything about Buster – anything at all, good or bad, please let me know. Otherwise I’ll see you in the AM.”
“Of course I will. Goodbye.”
Totally drained by nine o’clock that night, I sacked out early. I needed to be well-rested for the next day – for whatever might be waiting for me. As I lay there beneath a thin sheet in the darkness, I heard the single high-pitched “KWAWK” of a yellow-crowned night heron somewhere out in the mangroves. Then, right after that, came the “hoot, hoot, hoot, hoot” of an owl somewhere in the jungle back behind the trailer.
After the owl’s second series of hoots my eyelids met, and I again thought about what Julie had said on the phone. It hurt to think how she bared her soul to me – come right out and told me how much she really cared, and I wasn’t able do the same. She’d said there was something holding me back and, of course, she was a hundred percent right. But no matter how hard I tried, and I had been trying for quite some time, I just couldn’t get past that hand thing. Sure, she had a heart big as a setting sun in the tropics, and a face that was even more beautiful. But I was sure I knew myself. And for the first time I was dead sure that I couldn’t possibly spend the rest of my life with Julie Albright. That realization certainly didn’t bring me any peace though. For the longest time I just lay there – self-hate stabbing at me until, finally, I drifted off to sleep. But even then there was no serenity.
As I had so many times since our ugly breakup, I dreamed of Wendy and how things were when we first started dating. How carefree life was and how I anticipated being with her every minute that I wasn’t. I’d think of her while driving my old Plymouth, while at school and when at home with my parents. I lived for that girl, and she lived for me. Our relationship added a whole new dimension to my life. I was alive in every sense of the word; no longer just a solitary person living an incomplete existence. My life had become larger than that. I was bubbling over with youthful dreams and had somebody to share them with. Lovely as this dream sounds it was a cruel dream as well. Because I always woke up from it feeling empty inside – alone, missing that other part of myself that had betrayed me. Sure, those loving feelings I had for Wendy were gone by now, but the happy memories of us would never be. And it was those treasured remembrances that caused my lasting pain.
I had been into the dream for quite a while when something jarred me awake. There were sounds outside the trailer – noises really, strange unnatural noises off in the distance that I’d never heard on the Key. Motionless, still not totally conscious, I lay there in the blackness straining to hear. Then something clicked in my mind. It was engines that were tainting the nighttime quiet – big powerful ones, and they weren’t very far away.
As if an air raid siren had gone off, I sprung out of that bed; hot footed it through the trailer to the front room, backhanded both curtains open at once, and peered out beyond the channel.
I didn’t have to look long or far. Like a swarm of white fireflies, lights flickered on and off as they made their way through the brush on Flagler’s Key. It was them! They had come! Lionel Topper’s midnight dozers were clearing their way through the bushes and trees. Bright beams of light crisscrossed in the darkness as the destructive machines began to level the natural, wild beauty of the island. Surely, all the nearby animals – the key deer, coons, birds, and armadillos were fleeing the monstrous steel predators, some possibly abandoning their young.
That son of a bitch, Topper! He didn’t even wait! He’s leveling the key before they even had change of zoning hearing.
I dashed back to the bedroom and with shaky hands pulled on a shirt and shimmied into the first pair of shorts I could get my hands on. After hastily tying my sneakers, I grabbed my wallet and keys from the night stand and bolted out the door. There were lights on in most of the nearby trailers, including Julie’s. As I rushed to the door of my van, I hadn’t seen her standing out in front of her place in a terrycloth robe.
“Sonny, wait! Where are you going? Come ....”
“I can’t talk, Julie! Got to get to Pa’s! There’s no time to waste!” I shouted as I climbed into the bucket seat.
I then cranked up the van, peeled out of there, and sped over the bumpy road to Pa’s house. A couple of minutes later I skidded to a stop in front of his yard.
As I raced up the path to the house that the owl hooted again when the entire nighttime sky suddenly lit up like daylight. I dashed around the side, passed the cistern then saw Pa in the brilliant white light. Standing out on the dock in only his boxer shorts, pointing a flare gun toward Flagler’s Key, he discharged another one. “YOU RAPIST SONS OF BITCHES!” he hollered in a strained, hoarse voice as the white flare arched way out over the water like a comet.
He then started to reload the gun but looked up when he heard my heavy footsteps running toward him on the wooden planking.
“They’re doing it Pa!” I said a moment later, as I slammed into the dock’s wooden railing alongside him. “The bastards are ....”
I didn’t finish that sentence. I stopped talking right there when I turned to look at Pa. His shoulders were sagging as far as they’d go, and so was his heart. The old man was looking me in the eyes as if screaming for help. His tears had already made their way all the way to his jawbone, on both sides of his face. One fell to the woo
d below. This man who had stood strong against injustice for eighty years was now broken. It freaking tore at my heart to see him like this. To say I saw red would be an understatement – I saw crimson, a dark, angry shade of it that I’d only seen one other time in my life.
“Pa!” I told him, grabbing onto his perspiring shoulders and shaking them, “Go call the sheriff – right now! I’m going over there. You go ahead and call them. You have to!” Then I tore back to the van.
I barreled down the bumpy road even faster than I had come up it. Speeding through the dark tropical jungle; following my high beams through that impossible tangle of palmettos, tall trees, and long, dangling vines, I kept bouncing out of my seat – twice so high that I grazed my head on van’s roof.
After finally reaching Pa’s store, I slowed to a stop alongside the deserted highway, jerked my head both ways, stomped down on the gas pedal then yanked the van into hard a left turn. But I didn’t go far. Mere seconds later, just as I sped over the bridge’s summit, a pair of blinding high beams came barreling in my direction. The car blew right by me, but not so fast that I couldn’t make out the plate on its front bumper. In what felt like a nanosecond, I read it through squinted eyes. It screamed out, “WATERFRONT.” Lionel Topper was hauling ass from the scene.
“The flares spooked him!” I blurted out in a nervous yet psyched-up, adrenaline-fueled tone.
When I reached the other side of the bridge, the entire fleet of yellow, destructive vehicles was frantically hightailing it out of the woods. Some of the Caterpillars and Komatsus were already being loaded onto trailers and flatbed trucks. The deafening noise and cone-shaped beams of light illuminating the rising clouds of dust only added to the confusion. Truck drivers and dozer operators were rushing in every conceivable direction. I figured Topper must have hired every excavation crew from Key West to Homestead so that he could finish his clandestine mission in a single night.
