6 Martini Regrets

by Phyllis Smallman

  At the back stoop I paused. Maybe there was another way to find a phone, a safer way. The shade house might have a landline. Was it worth the time and the risk to try it? If there was someone still here, they would be in the house and not out in the unlit nursery.

  Crouching low, I darted across the open area between the structures. At the shade house, I paused. The pole lights along the front would make me a target if I went in that way. I’d try the back first and hope there were no alarms. Please, God, don’t let there be a dog locked in there.

  I ran around the corner and immediately tripped over a stack of clay pots. The noise of the clattering mess jolted me back to my feet and had me running for cover behind a giant oak. Precious minutes slipped by. There were two back doors in the shade house. I watched but neither opened. If anyone had heard me, maybe they just thought the noise was caused by an animal. I eased away from the oak.

  The first door in the long narrow structure was locked, but the second one, a screen door, creaked loudly as I pulled it towards me. I slipped inside. A picnic table stood at the center of the room, and on the floor beside me sat a stack of wooden boxes. This screened room seemed to be a combination packing shed and staff room, and even though two of the walls were open to the outside, the smell of chemicals hung in the air. I felt along the wall to see if there was a phone. Nothing.

  To my left was a door to another space. The door was unlocked and led to a plant room. The odor of damp earth and the cloying smell of flowers were overpowering. I eased myself inside, carefully closing the door behind me. Two steps beyond the door I trod on sharp shards. Someone had gone crazy in here. Broken pots and plants littered the floor. White blooms stood out among the carnage. I reached down and picked up an orchid. Placing my feet cautiously to avoid pieces of broken pots, I searched for a phone but again found nothing.

  I went back to the screened room. The only option left was the end room with the locked door to the outside.

  CHAPTER 9

  Warily, turning the doorknob and pushing with only the tips of my fingers, I inched the door open. A warm rush of putrid air assaulted me, driving me back. I breathed deep and clamped my fingers over my nose, and then I pushed the door the rest of the way open.

  The tiny office was well lit by the light outside, so I could see the destruction clearly. Papers littered the floor, and a chair had been overturned. I stepped into the room. The foul smell was even stronger. Pulling my blouse up over my nose and breathing through my mouth, I stepped around an overturned table. What I saw was worse than what I smelled.

  In the middle of the mess was a man. He didn’t move, didn’t stir or jump up to protest my intrusion, didn’t demand to know why I was there. He just lay there. Was he breathing? I inched towards him.

  As I knelt down a cloud of flies flew up into my face. I brushed frantically at them before I sort of shook him and said, “Mister.” His very stillness told me he was dead, but I touched the clammy skin of his neck anyway.

  My probing fingers didn’t find a pulse there so I searched for a beat on his cold wrist. Nothing. The man was beyond help. A quick look at the walls and the desk told me there was no landline. There might be a cell phone in his pants pocket or in his shirt. Patting his body down was difficult and disgusting. No cell, but it might be under the body.

  I pushed my fingers under his side, feeling for his pants pocket. They didn’t go in far enough so I grabbed his belt and turned the body over. The corpse made a noise. There was a new assault on my nose. I dropped him and ran.

  Outside, I bent over and retched. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I couldn’t go back in there. I wanted to get as far away from the dead man as I could. I returned the way I’d come, down along the side of the building, past wooden crates, potted palms and stacks of clay pots, to the end of the shade house. I wasn’t quiet nor was I careful. I was just trying to escape from the dead. At the house I hesitated. I looked into a bedroom window, lit from a hall light left on. It all looked so normal and inviting. I tried the window again. I still couldn’t open it. After finding the dead man, breaking the glass seemed too big a risk. Easier to run than to break in and look for a phone. The men who were about to return to the nursery were playing for keeps and I’d exhausted my courage.

  I ran across the open ground, past the upturned canoes and down the weathered dock.

  At the edge of the water, where the air was fresh, I stopped and listened. The night seemed unnaturally quiet. I heard individual creatures instead of one loud cacophony. There was no human sound, no sound of a motor from a boat or from a car, just the ordinary things I expected to hear. I stepped into the canoe and looked down the ribbon of moonlight, searching the surface of the canal in both directions for danger. There was no boat coming towards me, but maybe it was pulled into the overhang of vegetation.

  I untied the canoe and pushed away from the dock with my paddle, and then I dug in and stroked hard, wanting to put distance between myself and the nursery. The sound of the blade passing through the water seemed loud in the night that had suddenly gone quiet.

  My hands, soft from my life running a restaurant, were blistered and raw. They could barely grip the wood. I adjusted my hold, trying to use only my fingers to protect the palms. It didn’t work. I took off my gauzy blouse and wrapped it around my left hand to shield it from the head of the paddle. That was better. My foot was cut from the broken clay pot I’d stepped on. I tried to keep it out of the foul water in the bottom of the canoe but it was impossible. How long had it been since I’d had a tetanus shot? It was a worry for later. I fell into a steady rhythm of dip and pull. My shoulders ached.

  It began to rain. The big round plops on my skin at first soothed me, but in no time they proved to be a false relief. Soon I was shivering. And then the rain stopped just as quickly and silently as it had begun.

  No longer looking back, I pulled weakly on the paddle, my arms going through a numbing routine. How long? Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, maybe even a half hour, and then, over the stunted growth along the waterway, I saw the head of a loblolly pine, standing sixty feet above the brush. Strange and out of place among the stunted growth, it seemed like a beacon. I pulled over to the edge of the canal and considered it while I unwrapped my hand and shrugged my top back on.

  The loblolly might indicate help. The fact that it was growing there signaled raised dry land and could mean someone was living nearby. Loblolly pines grow fast, so they’re used a lot around new houses. But in my misery, this evidence of people seemed like a further threat. Everyone living in this swamp felt dangerous. I had no other choice. I couldn’t go back, that was for certain. Forward was the only way. Could I get around the people living here without being caught? It was still dark enough that no one would be up—no honest people. But maybe I was worrying unnecessarily. A loblolly might just be growing there all on its own with no help from anyone. Sure, and I might yet be queen of the prom.

  I eased towards the towering pine. I hadn’t gone more than sixty feet when the brush disappeared and a chain-link fence replaced it. A tired-looking dog, lying in the dirt by the back door of a squat house, raised his head and gave a discouraged bark. He staggered stiffly to his feet and took a few steps towards me. A motion light on the back wall of the house came on, lighting up a red plastic slide into a child’s pool. The brown dog gave another bark and flopped back down.

  I slid by.

  What I’d happened upon was a small subdivision of box-like houses with barren backyards enclosed by chain-link fences, the kind of place you’d be happy to live in if you were raising a family on minimum wage. In the middle of nowhere, with no services, and built as cheaply as possible, homes like these started to decay before the ink was dry on the sales agreement. This was a place not that different from the trailer park I’d grown up in, and it probably suffered from all the same problems, but it gave me hope. The people here would be people I unders
tood—well, some of them.

  I studied the dwellings, hoping to see something that would help me choose the right door to knock on to ask for help. The chain-link fences protected children and pets from gators, but how in hell did they protect themselves from the snakes?

  There was no way to get into the backyards. The chain links kept out not only gators but me as well. I slipped by a half dozen of the pastel-painted structures before I came to a sloping concrete area for launching boats. I swung in but remained uncertain whether I’d reached shelter or more peril.

  I needed a phone to call the cops. Okay, but which door should I knock on? Who could I trust? The risk of the unknown terrified me, froze me into inaction and sent wild thoughts buzzing through my brain. Cars were parked at every house, so there was access to a road. Maybe I could hitchhike out or even just take a long walk.

  I had to do something, and I had to do it fast. I made my decision.

  I pulled the canoe up far enough to keep it from floating away but not so far that I couldn’t leave quickly if it all went wrong. Still I hesitated. There was a small, haphazard pile of bricks from a long-ago home improvement sitting off to the side by a fence. I picked one up, more for reassurance than actually believing I could protect myself. It was rough and painful to my blistered palm.

  Creeping slowly and staying low, like I’d seen in a thousand movies, I went up the paved chute between the wire fences, checking out the backyards and trying to guess from the contents of each enclosure the sort of people who lived in the house. The houses on either side had a deserted look. The first house I’d passed after the loblolly tree, the one with a backyard filled with children’s toys, seemed the most reassuring to me. Children indicated a woman, safety and caring. Maybe I was wrong, but I had to have some way of making a choice. I darted from one parked car to another. At the third house an unholy ruckus started up. A dog was going crazy inside. I crouched down on my heels and waited for it to end.

  A light came on and then went off. The dog was silent. I started forward, past a white utility van, and saw a sight that lifted my heart. My red pickup sat before me like a gift. It was a surprise, but I should have known lightning-bolt man lived somewhere close if he went back and forth by canoe. Did Angie live here as well? She’d recognize me too. I looked around but couldn’t see her car.

  I scurried towards the truck, less cautious than I should have been.

  The metal was cool and damp to my touch. I peeked inside. My purse was still on the floor where I’d thrown it. I tried the door, tugging on it again and again, but the conscientious thief had locked it. That was okay. I wasn’t done yet. Marley, my best friend and the most organized person on earth, had made sure I’d never be locked out of my vehicle. She’d not only given me a magnetic key box for my birthday, she’d cut a key and stuck the magnetic box under the back bumper, knowing I never would.

  I was on my knees, feeling under the bumper for the spare key, when I heard a door slam. I froze in a tight ball behind the truck. I heard the crunch of footsteps coming towards me.

  CHAPTER 10

  I stole a look around the back of the truck. Tito. He’d changed his clothes but I still recognized him. He was at the door to the pickup with a duffle bag in his hand. He tossed the bag in the bed of the truck and started digging in his pocket.

  Still holding the brick, I jumped to my feet. He had the key in the lock and was turning to me in startled surprise, raising his arm to protect himself, when I hit him.

  He went down but he was still conscious and moaning in pain. I hit him again. He covered his head with his hands and drew his knees up under him, trying to protect himself.

  The key was still in the lock. Safe inside the truck, I hit the lock button and then reached under the seat to the little metal shelf Tully had installed and took out the Beretta. Working late hours at the restaurant and making bank deposits, Tully had insisted, over Clay’s objections, that I carry a weapon.

  Tito scrambled to his knees and raised his hands in supplication, saying, “Please don’t leave me here.” I pointed the Beretta at him. When he saw the gun his eyes widened in surprise and then he said, “No, no, no,” over and over.

  My eyes searched the houses to see if anyone was coming to his rescue. No lights came on and no one ran towards us. I started the engine.

  Tito was on his feet and flinging himself against the truck door. “Please,” he shouted. His arms were spread wide, begging. Blood streamed down his face from his forehead, spilling into his eyes and mouth.

  I put the gun on my lap and shifted into reverse.

  Holding onto the mirror, he said, “I want to go with you.”

  I pointed the gun right in his face. “After what you did?” A small part of me wanted to pull the trigger. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  I could see his fear, but he didn’t back away. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  I motioned with the gun. “Back away from the truck.”

  He stepped back a few inches, still close enough to lunge for me.

  I rolled the window down about four inches. “You stole my truck and now you want me to help you?” My voice rose to a screech at the end of the sentence.

  “I was going to return it.”

  My disgust was boundless. “Sure you were.”

  He lowered his head, beaten. “I needed to get away.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, smearing blood across his face. “I always take a canoe home at night and back to work the next day. I don’t have a car, easiest way to get there . . . to the rental place where I work. Tonight, my dad was drunk . . . uses me as a punching bag when he comes home that way. I went back to the shack.” It all poured out in one unbroken string until he stopped and wiped blood and snot away with the flat of his hand. “I keep a sleeping bag there for when I have to stay.

  “Those men came to the nursery with my cousin Angie’s boyfriend.” Fear enlarged his eyes. He wasn’t seeing me anymore but something more frightening than a woman with a gun. He moved closer to the truck. “They beat Mr. Bricklin and then they killed him. I saw them and they saw me, but I got away. I paddled out to the service station where Angie works, but Ruben had already called her to find me . . . told her what they were going to do to me and that she should stay out of it. Angie wouldn’t help me.”

  I could see that her betrayal still surprised him.

  “That’s why I stole your truck and got out of there.” It seemed so logical to him, like he expected me to totally understand and forgive him.

  “You left me there to get killed, and now I’m leaving you.” I rolled up the window.

  “Don’t leave me here.” His hands were on the window, smearing it with blood, his face close to mine. “Please help me.”

  “What the shit do I care about you? You aren’t my problem.”

  He fell against the glass, crumpling into a heap of defeat and pain. “If you leave me, they’ll find me and kill me.”

  “Still not my problem.” But he was as scared as I’d been, and my own terror was too new for me to ignore his. “You stole my truck.” I eased off the brake. I’d already wasted too much time on him.

  He ran along beside me, holding on to the door handle. “Please.” He started to cry. “There’s no one else to help me.” There were no sobs, just rivers of tears running silently down his face, mixing with the blood.

  My rage left me. I braked. My shoulders slumped. “Okay.”

  He didn’t hear me so I rapped on the window.

  He looked up and I nodded to the empty truck bed. “Get in there and keep down.”

  In the rearview I saw him clear the side like an Olympian and disappear down into the bed.

  I laid the gun on the seat beside me and spun gravel getting out of there. I took the turn too fast, the truck rocking and giving me hell before I got it settled. “Shit, shit, shit.” I suddenly realized that
when the men didn’t find Tito, they would head here. I watched for lights coming towards me. Why had I taken him with me? I prayed I’d get clear before they came, hoped they wouldn’t find Tito in the bed of the truck.

  The little road came out to the westbound freeway entrance, leaving me no other choice, but two miles down the road, before I got to Last Chance Road, I spotted a turnaround for cops and service vehicles. I shot across the gravel path, warning myself to slow down, and rocketed onto the freeway headed east. There was no way I was going to cross the Alley to Naples with Tito in the back. All I wanted to do was find a place to drop him and forget I’d ever seen him.

  I was doing eighty-five. The whole vehicle shuddered and shimmied. Any faster and the whole frame might fly apart. Still, I pressed on the gas. The speedometer hovered around ninety. I actually hoped to see a police car. Driving too fast and getting stopped by a cop would be a good thing. But there was none.

  The hangover from terror had left me with only a fine thread of control. I took deep breaths, trying not to think any further than the road directly ahead of me. While there were few other cars traveling Alligator Alley, each set of lights felt like a threat. The problem was, I no longer knew what danger looked like. I was only too aware of my surroundings, watching the bed of the truck in the rearview and trying to guess where the next bad thing would come from.

  Within ten miles, everything changed. In Florida you move from the raw, dangerous natural world to the man-made plastic world and back again. Florida is a paradox; wild nature fights urban growth, but development moves unrelentingly on.

  Here on the edge of the Glades was the land of the weird, with no planning and no regulations. My panic had barely settled when the Everglades morphed into half-built subdivisions and billboards for tourist traps. A falling-down sign advertised Swamp-Man Pete’s gator farm and airboat rides. When I was a kid I’d begged my dad to take me there, but he’d always said they were closed. Tully is the only person on earth who lies more than me, so there was no telling if Tully was fibbing or the sign was. It would serve Tito right if I dropped him in a pile of gators, but I needed an exit with an on-ramp to the westbound freeway. On we went.