Cold Florida

by Phillip DePoy

  ‘So you accept my deal,’ Henderson said. ‘Good. My Seminole friends and I are just coming to an agreement as well, and this evening can end on a relatively satisfying note, except for this terrible weather. I had no idea that Florida could get this cold.’

  ‘It’ll get colder still before spring,’ I said. ‘And I agree that this evening will end up being pretty satisfying for most of us. Except, of course, for McReedy. I presume he’s dead.’

  Henderson only nodded.

  ‘How are you going to manage that?’ I ask. ‘I mean, there’s now a dead guy in your condominium.’

  ‘That?’ He laughed me off. ‘I have a special cleaning service. He’s already gone. Someone will find him in some alley somewhere – another junkie dead from an overdose.’

  ‘I think the rain’s letting up,’ Harvey sang.

  I looked out the big hangar doors. It did seem that the rain might be backing off somewhat.

  ‘And, as to our understanding,’ Henderson said to Mister Redhawk, ‘I can have the papers delivered to you by the end of the week. You’ll have your park, I’ll have the majority of the oil rights, everything else is split equitably.’

  ‘We still don’t quite agree on the percentages,’ Mister Redhawk began.

  ‘You wouldn’t have any percentage if you didn’t have some small bargaining chip!’ Henderson barked. ‘Consider yourself lucky that I’ve decided it’s just too irritating to stay in this place one more night! We’re not going to settle anything further; don’t press me!’

  I turned to John Horse. ‘Now, do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘Seems right,’ he said, nodding.

  Harvey the pilot got into the Dassault Falcon 10 and started making preparations for takeoff. Sharon began to gather up some of her things; a purse, a packet of papers, a small overnight bag. Henderson stood and was about to say something when I held up my hand.

  I pulled out a notepad from my inner suit coat pocket. I considered, then, how lucky it was that I hadn’t changed clothes. I could never have remembered everything I needed to say without my notepad.

  ‘Pascal Henderson,’ I said, using the same voice I’d used only twice before in Florida, ‘Pursuant to a criminal investigation regarding Florida statutes 794.05 and 800.04: please sit down.’

  ‘What?’ he asked me with an equal mixture of amusement and irritation.

  ‘I said sit down, please,’ I told him. ‘You’re under arrest.’

  He began to laugh. ‘Under arrest? You think you can link me to McReedy’s death?’

  ‘I think I could if I had enough time, but that’s not the crime in question at the moment.’ I flipped my pad. ‘You’re going to want to hear my little speech. In all my concern for your child, Lynette’s little baby, I overlooked something very obvious. I overlooked the fact that my job is to protect all children.’

  ‘Protect all children.’ He seemed more confused than amused at that point. ‘Isn’t the child protected by your Indian friends, here?’

  ‘Not that child,’ I said, and with no small amount of delight. ‘I am referring to another child.’

  Henderson turned to Sharon. ‘What’s he talking about, do you have any idea?’

  She just stared. I wondered if she might, at that moment, be figuring out what I had in mind. It had been pretty obvious all this time.

  ‘You had the U.S. Army raid the Seminole compound to get McReedy in 1957, is that correct?’ I asked Henderson.

  He glared at me. ‘When my jet is ready to take off, I’m leaving.’

  ‘I really wouldn’t do that. The police are on their way. Not the ones you own, the real ones.’ I looked at Sharon. ‘The ones you told me to avoid: Baxter and Gordon. Turns out they’re not on your father’s payroll.’

  Sharon looked down.

  ‘What is he talking about, Sharon?’ Henderson repeated.

  ‘Math,’ I said. ‘My job is to protect children. And, if my math is correct, nine months ago it was 1973. Let us say that Lynette was several months old when you had her taken away from her family and put in an orphanage, that would make her sixteen years old when you schtupped her. And that, my friend, is statutory rape in the great State of Florida.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Henderson mumbled, but the amusement was entirely gone from his demeanor.

  ‘I’m talking about Florida statute 794.05.’ I consulted my notepad. ‘I quote: “A person twenty-four years of age or older who engages in sexual activity with a person sixteen or seventeen years of age commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided …” well, a few of the other statutes outline the various punishments. The worst is death, followed by life in prison. The original section, you will be interested to know, was enacted nearly a hundred years ago, to protect children under the age of eighteen. Then, in 1943, it was expanded by section 800.04, which applies to children under the age of sixteen. Either way, you’re screwed, if I may use that word. Because we have scientifically verifiable evidence of your crime in the person of Lynette’s baby; yours and Lynette’s. I checked on this. There are tests they can run to tell with 99% certainty who’s the father. And my friend, you’re the father. Ergo, you have violated the aforementioned statutes, and I am fulfilling my legally mandated duty as an officer of Florida Child Protective Services.’

  ‘The child he’s protecting, you see,’ John Horse said calmly, ‘is not the baby. It’s Lynette.’

  ‘Statutory rape,’ said Mister Redhawk, smiling bigger than I would have thought possible. ‘How could I not have … nice work, Mr Moscowitz.’

  ‘And the thing is,’ I went on, ‘that I’m legally empowered to enforce these laws, ironically, by virtue of the job that you got me. You have to love that.’

  ‘You’re a common criminal!’ Henderson erupted. ‘You don’t have any legal empowerment!’

  ‘I think Sharon will tell you otherwise,’ I allowed. ‘When I was hired, they gave me a badge and a lecture about what my job was. I swore an oath. I do have certain limited legal powers. Oddly enough, I take that oath and those powers very seriously. You may be aware of certain motivations I might have for taking this job in the first place, and you think you know me. You think it was all your idea. But it wasn’t. It was God’s idea.’

  ‘God?’ He looked around at all of us, like not one of us was sane. ‘God?’

  ‘Or whatever,’ I said, giving him a shrug I inherited from my Aunt Shayna. ‘The point is, I took the job for reasons of my own, and I’m feeling pretty good about those reasons right at the moment.’

  ‘Statutory rape?’ he said, really loud. ‘Are you serious? Is this a joke? The girl is a junkie and a prostitute.’

  ‘Who was sixteen when you abused her.’ I looked back down at my notepad, but mostly for effect. ‘That’s verified by science. And it says here that it’s a second-degree felony punishable by death or life in prison. That doesn’t sound funny to me.’

  ‘You actually think you can make the slightest case, that the police are going to come and arrest me?’ he demanded to know.

  And right on cue, we hear, way off in the distance, police sirens.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think they are.’

  ‘Well, this is ridiculous,’ he said, but he looked less sure of himself than he had all evening. ‘I’ll just … I have the best lawyers in the world. I’ll brush this off before it ever comes to court. And you, Mr Moscowitz, you’re the one who’ll be in prison. Our deal is off! And as far as the Seminoles go? Forget your little park. I’ll drill every inch from here to the ocean. There won’t be a livable square foot anywhere in that swamp, or this town, or this part of Florida. Let’s do some more math, shall we? By the end of this year, crude oil will sell at twelve dollars a barrel. If I drill, say, just five hundred wells in the swamp and across that execrable little village, Fry’s Bay, and each one produces, let’s say conservatively, twenty barrels a day, wait … that’s over $43,000,000 a year. That’s what I get. Moscowitz gets prison. Indians get nothing. I g
et $43,000,000. So. Are we done here?’

  That’s when I produced the nice little Swiss Model 210 Sig, Sharon’s small but accurate pistol.

  ‘Look what I found,’ I said to Sharon. ‘Does it look familiar? It’s yours. I palmed it neatly when Philip went to frisk me a minute ago. Pretty neat, don’t you think? It’s just the right size for that! So I guess we’re not entirely done here, after all, Mr Henderson.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Henderson said, and then he yelled, ‘Start the plane, Harvey.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Harvey called out, ‘but I have to get the tractor to pull it out of the hangar.’

  ‘Start the goddamned engines!’ Henderson insisted.

  ‘I can’t do that in the hangar, sir,’ Harvey yelled back, ‘this is a jet. But I’ll get the plane out right now.’

  Harvey was apparently unaware of the drama unfolding elsewhere in the hangar.

  ‘Right now!’ Henderson shouted.

  Harvey jumped out of the plane, went to some squat little tractor and fired it up. He backed it right up to the nose of the plane.

  Henderson glared at Sharon. ‘What are you doing just standing there? Get on the damned plane.’

  She seemed confused. Then she looked around the room like she didn’t recognize anybody. Then she threw up.

  ‘Sharon doesn’t feel well,’ I told Henderson.

  Harvey hooked up the jet to the tractor thing, and he started to haul the airplane out of the hangar. Outside, the rain was nearly gone, but the sky was still black and the clouds were low.

  And the sound of sirens was getting louder.

  ‘I don’t think you can entirely prove paternity, by the way,’ Henderson said, edging himself around the table. ‘I don’t admit to being the father of the baby. It’s not my child.’

  ‘No, this is what I’m trying to tell you,’ I said. ‘Besides calling the police, I also called Maggie Redhawk at the hospital. She confirms what I already suspected – that the Seminole tribe has a very good lawyer.’

  ‘We have incontrovertible proof of your paternity, Mr Henderson,’ Mister Redhawk said, still seated. ‘I, quite naturally, assumed that you’d deny the child if it came to a lawsuit. You don’t think I’d have threatened you if I hadn’t had ironclad evidence, do you? I just hadn’t … I’d overlooked the obvious angle of statutory rape. I mean, Lynette seems much older than she is. That’s thanks to you, I suppose.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Henderson raved. ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’

  Henderson moved all of a sudden like lightning. He grabbed Sharon and twisted her around, holding her in front of him. He had his arm wrapped around her throat. She was a little taller than he was, so it all looked pretty uncomfortable.

  ‘Wait,’ Sharon said weakly.

  ‘I’m getting on my private jet,’ he told us all, holding Sharon in front of him like a giant rag doll. ‘I have urgent business in New York. My lawyers will deal with this.’

  ‘Your lawyers are going to have to deal with it in Fry’s Bay,’ I told him.

  Without much of a thought, I moved pretty quickly toward the jet. I showed Harvey my gun. He seemed very surprised. The tractor stopped moving.

  Then I shot the front tire of the big jet. It made an ungodly noise exploding inside the old hanger. Everyone reacted badly, me included.

  My hearing was momentarily blocked.

  Henderson was staring like I’d shot his dog. I said to him, ‘See? You’re not going anywhere. So let go of Sharon and have a seat.’

  My voice sounded funny to me, and there was a definite ringing in my ears.

  Henderson dropped Sharon and started screaming. ‘You’re all going to be dead! I’ve changed my mind! I’m just going to have you killed!’

  The sirens were really loud by then. Henderson was practically frothing at the mouth. Philip and Mister Redhawk seemed oddly calm, John Horse was grinning, and Harvey had a sudden emergency and ran to the toilet in the back of the hangar.

  Sharon groaned from her spot on the floor. She looked terrible.

  ‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘I think I just figured out why Sharon’s so sick tonight.’

  I put away my pistol and hustled over to her.

  ‘What is it?’ Philip said, coming over to the table.

  ‘Sharon,’ I said. ‘Wake up.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Sharon, what did you do?’ I said, a little softer.

  I pushed up her sleeves, and I was relieved to see that there are no track marks on her arms. Then I noticed that her nose was bleeding.

  I looked up at Henderson. ‘Here’s what’s wrong, I think. You told Jody to prepare a stronger package than usual for McReedy after he failed to ice me. So Jody had some strong stuff in play. But what you didn’t know is that Jody and Sharon knew each other – that’s my guess. She’s always talking about her criminal friends. So let’s say that Jody got this strong stuff tonight, and then thought it would be a shame to give it all to McReedy when, if they were careful, they could snort just a little, and get quite a punch. Only for a junkie, just a little turns into just one more after you’ve done about six or seven lines. Jody and Sharon did too much. Here’s another thing that’s your fault, Mr Henderson: your daughter, here, might die. She has to go to the hospital right now.’

  ‘Sharon?’ He looked down. ‘How would she know Jody?’

  ‘Through you,’ I said simply. ‘Plus, it’s a small town. I’m surprised that I met so many new people in the past couple of days. Fry’s Bay, it’s really a kind of wonderland.’

  The cop car pulled up into the hangar, lights flashing. Two cops got out. They were both in uniform, both in hats, guns in holsters, and almost impossible to tell apart at a distance – or maybe it was just me. All cops looked the same in uniform because I didn’t ever look them in the face.

  Philip went to stand next to Mister Redhawk. I noticed that his pistol had vanished. I felt it wise to make mine do the same, and it was gone. I was still kneeling beside Sharon.

  ‘Mister Redhawk,’ one of the cops said.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Baxter,’ he answered.

  ‘Mr Henderson?’ the other cop said. ‘Would you mind standing up, please?’

  Henderson stayed seated.

  The cops were sauntering our way very casually. The other one, Gordon, spoke to me over the tabletop.

  ‘Are you Moscowitz?’ he wanted to know. ‘What are you doing back there?’

  ‘It’s my boss, Sharon,’ I said. ‘She has to go to the hospital.’

  Both cops moved faster.

  ‘What happened?’ Baxter asked.

  ‘She’s having a drug reaction,’ I said. ‘She needs to get to the hospital right away. Can you take her or let us take her in the Jeep and give us an escort or something?’

  ‘What kind of a drug reaction?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘Pretty sure she snorted a speedball mix,’ I said.

  ‘Got it from Jody,’ Baxter assumed.

  ‘That was quick,’ I said, unable to hide my surprise at his deductive powers. ‘How did you figure that?’

  ‘Jody’s in the hospital already,’ Baxter said. ‘She’s seriously messed up. Same deal. Nose bleeding. Quasi-comatose.’

  ‘So can we just get Sharon to the hospital?’ I asked again. ‘There’s a lot that I don’t like about her right at the moment, but I don’t want her to die.’

  And, just at that moment, gunfire exploded in the hangar. Once again the sound was deafening. I peered under the table to discover Harvey, who was not the bland character I had previously taken him for, had a serious automatic rifle leveled in my direction. Although I was lucky to have one policeman and one table between me and the gun, I was still very nervous about my chances, because I saw that the gun was a very pretty AK-47, and the wood was polished to the hilt, which meant that Harvey loved his gun. Which meant he probably knew how to use it. Which was bad news. Guys who didn’t know how to use an AK-47 would just point and pull and let the gun do
the work. Guys who did know how to use one could put seventeen bullets into your midsection before you could blink twice.

  Harvey was planted behind the tractor thing, and everyone else was on the floor, except Henderson. Philip had literally picked up Mister Redhawk and shielded him with his body as they both dived for the space beside the table. The two cops hit the deck, guns drawn, and looked for a shot. John Horse was the most graceful among us. He somehow managed to shove his chair backwards with his heels so that the chair glided across the smooth floor of the hangar, with him in it, almost ten feet away from the table. Then he just sat on the floor behind a large metal cabinet and watched.

  Henderson stood up.

  ‘Thank you, Harvey,’ he said coldly. ‘Can we take off with the front tire like that or will you have to change it?’

  ‘It’d be rough,’ Harvey said, still aiming his gun. ‘It’s possible to take off that way, but it’s risky. Better to change the tire.’

  Henderson moved quickly to the shelter behind the tractor, beside Harvey.

  I saw Baxter inching his way along the floor and I got that he was trying to clear a side shot, but unfortunately Harvey saw it too. Without any warning, Harvey fired two shots. Both hit Baxter, one in the gun arm and one in the opposite leg. Harvey did, indeed, know what he was doing.

  Baxter was making a pretty awful noise, and Gordon was cursing up a storm.

  Actually, that was a good thing, because it created a sort of sonic cover. It was distracting to hear a man screaming in pain and another man tearing the fabric of human decency with his profanity. At least I hoped it was distracting for Harvey.

  I took out the little Sig from my coat as inconspicuously as I could, trying to look like I was ministering to Sharon. Then I calculated my options. Unless I stood up, I couldn’t see Harvey. And if I stood up, I’d get shot. Then it came to me: I was just about at tractor tire level, where I was under the table. It came to me to shoot out a second tire. That would be a lot more distracting than the noise of the cops, and I might be able to get off a few shots at Harvey.