1 Red Right Return

by John H. Cunningham

  Booth wound up a hero, taking credit for busting up the smuggling ring, cracking a spy case, and defusing the rush to war. There was no mention of me at all, which suited me fine. Frank Nardi was quoted on the duel with the patrol boat that ended when the Cubans rescued Gutierrez and high-tailed it back to Havana. Granma, the Cuban State-owned newspaper, proclaimed Gutierrez a hero who’d single-handedly repelled a U.S. Coast Guard cutter and the inevitable invasion. He was decorated for bravery and installed as a senior officer within State Security. As for me, my fragile deal with Booth was quite the surprise, but my freedom was worth the occasional errand for him. It might even be interesting. My stash and GPS, however, along with the coordinates to the Esmeralda, were lost at sea.

  Maybe I wouldn’t tell the Park Service about the gold, just yet.

  With Karen’s help I had exhausted every thought on the last clue: LOVE OF HIS LIFE, with none hitting the mark. Nothing from Hemingway, Jefferson, Vigenère, Cicero, Caesar or any of the others resulted in a five-letter name or anything that came close to a clue that made sense.

  Willy had stuck to his word, and the $10,000 reward went straight to Ray Floyd to commence the rebuild of Betty’s port engine. I was now broke but hopeful at the prospect of earning a few thousand tonight.

  The canvas sagged when Bruiser climbed in. I felt Ray’s grip tighten on my bicep. “Make that ninety / ten, old buddy.” Havana Club rum was on his breath.

  I’d hit bottom of the brains end of the B/B Ratio in my trusty trainer’s estimation. Without brains to rein balls, overachievers hit walls. Floyd’s Law was indeed appropriate tonight, if not for my future epitaph in the Key West cemetery.

  92

  “AND NOW, IN THE red corner…” Lenny began to whoop the crowd into a frenzy. “Key West’s own Conch Cruncher… the Florida Hurricane… Brroooozzerr Lleewwiisssss!”

  A strange sense of calm spread through my body. Having been here before, in many rings with other opponents boasting more impressive records, I’d walked away victorious more times then not. The restaurant’s sound system suddenly burst to life, the theme to Rocky blaring at speaker-bursting capacity.

  Lenny was sweating profusely and holding back a grin, clearly enjoying his own stage persona and musical grandiosity.

  “And in the blue corner… Key West’s newest action hero… the Virginia Vigilante… the Cantankerous Cracker. Wiiiilllldd Bbuuccckkk Rrryyyyllyyy!” He winked at me.

  Karen tugged at my calf. She was leaning on the edge of her seat. I took a knee in what must have appeared to be a moment of prayer, because the boisterous crowd suddenly quieted down.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She stood and pressed her lips hard against mine. Seconds passed and the crowd began cheering, whistling and clapping. When we finally pulled apart, I couldn’t hear her voice over the noise. She repeated herself while pointing toward the Gargoyles, but the crowd’s roar overpowered her voice.

  “Are you ready to rock and roll?” Lenny I could hear. My attention shifted to Bruiser Lewis, standing in the center of the ring like a Cape buffalo poised to charge.

  Ray slapped me on the back. I glanced around to catch his final advice.

  “LET’S RUN!”

  A bikini-clad transvestite circled the interior of the ring, lifting a large placard with a pink number “1” scribbled on the front. The crowd hooted and hollered at the apparition unique to this boxing community. She mooned the audience before slipping back through the ropes to a gaggle of friends who were holding signs “2” and “3.” Hopefully they’d get to take their turns too.

  Truck was in the far corner. He was mouthing something to me.

  “Fool.”

  The referee, an elderly bearded man I’d never met before, pulled Bruiser and me together in the center of the ring and held up our gloves.

  “Let’s have a clean fight, boys. Remember, whether you win or lose, the sun will rise tomorrow.” I felt a vague sense of recognition, but couldn’t place where.

  Lenny crashed a hammer against a bell that had Key West High School painted on it, and the crowd was on their feet. Bruiser lunged forward in a tight crouch, his dark eyes peering through his Everlast gloves. The electrical commands from my brain short-circuited. My feet were leaden on the canvas.

  A red orb streaked toward my nose and I ducked in time for it to only graze my ear, a wakeup call that jump-started my dancing feet. I circled around him, standing a good six inches taller, but my 225 pounds fell 50 short of his stout, barrel-chested physique.

  The opening seconds sped past with him in constant pursuit, and me trying to control my breathing so I wouldn’t hyperventilate and collapse. For his size, he was deceptively fast. He bulled me into a corner and let loose a wicked barrage into my stomach. I connected with left then right crosses, knocking his mouthpiece askew. I skirted his bulk and found clear air, bolstered by the exchange but bent a couple inches lower from the punishment to my ribs.

  Stay off the ropes.

  Sounds from the crowd pulsed through my brain, then another sound surprised me—Lenny hammered on the bell. The old referee jumped between us and pointed to the corners. I’d survived Round One, now $1,000 richer.

  Karen’s seat was empty. Sitting on the stool in the corner, I put my head in my hands.

  “Dear God, man, don’t let that beast catch you!” Ray’s advice bespoke his experience at fight management, this being his first round ever. I spit out the mouthpiece and between panting breaths guzzled water from a bottle bearing the name Stolichnaya.

  “Trip him or something, maybe he’ll fall and hit his head,” Ray said.

  Laughter rang out as the next Round Girl, or Guy, pranced around in the ring, dirty dancing with her placard. Lenny waved to Ray, rolling one hand and looking at a stopwatch in the other. A sudden commotion by the door caught my attention. Karen was running back in, waving her arms. She pushed through the packed crowd until she reached the ring, breathless.

  “Buck, wait! I figured it out, I mean—listen, maybe your father wrote the clue referring to himself!”

  The bell rang and Ray slapped me on the back. “Okay, champ, you’ve got clearance for takeoff.”

  I lumbered to my feet in a fog of surprise and confusion. Bruiser was on me instantaneously. My feet suddenly felt lighter than before, and I surprised him by launching myself toward him. He balled up behind blue tattoos on his broad ebony forearms. With my adrenalin coursing at a fevered pitch, I landed a half-dozen blows before he pressed his weight into me and shoved me back into the center of the ring.

  Wasting no time, Bruiser switched back to offense, clearly his preferred mode. He mixed body blows with punishing hooks to my neck and shoulders. I protected my head by deflecting the assault with my body, but a growing numbness in my arms sounded an alarm in my besieged brain. My left eyebrow was impeding my sight, which I took to be a glob of Vaseline that had oozed off my forehead. After brushing at it to no effect, I realized I’d been wounded. It just made me more determined.

  Fatigue sang a chorus in my body and summoned a tactical sea change. My circuit had been consistently clockwise around the ring with Bruiser in constant pursuit, herding me like a cutting horse toward an unsavory task. When I suddenly reversed direction, I coiled the weight of my body into an upper cut that started at my knee and arced through the halogen light, catching Bruiser dead on his exposed chin.

  Surprise filled his eyes for a split second before they fluttered and he reeled backward, bounced off the ropes, spun into the center of the ring, and teetered again. His mouthpiece fell in slow motion toward the canvas.

  Years ago I had the killer instinct down to a science, but life’s experiences and the lack of ring time had softened my edge. Rather than closing in and hammering at my wounded foe, I watched him with hopeful expectation. A surreal whoosh from the crowd wafted through my ears. I dropped my arms and waited for the massive trunk of a man to fall.

  Unfortunately, that proved to be a strategic error in j
udgment.

  A veteran of dozens of battles, most occurring since I’d last donned the gloves, Bruiser had mastered his own technique of self-preservation and resurrection. On his third turn of the corkscrew toward the canvas, he inexplicably accelerated like a discus thrower, levitating up from the depths of defeat.

  I was stunned by the sudden eclipse of light when the bright red leather crown of his left glove covered my face like a dinner plate.

  The world turned upside down and somewhere in a disassociated cavity of my brain, Karen’s epiphany that LOVE OF HIS LIFE might refer to my father struck a final spark. The spelling of my mother’s name flickered in the fog: B-E-T-T-Y.

  My world faded black to the sound of a steady drumbeat, and the sight of a rooster peering up from underneath the bottom rope a foot away.

  He was wearing a smart blue ribbon.

  The End

  Acknowledgements

  For their help with this book, the author is particularly grateful to Ross Browne, Renni Browne, Peter Gelfan and the entire team at The Editorial Department, Widgeon pilot and flight instructor Chester Lawson, fellow author Robert Gandt, my agent Steve Troha at Folio Literary Management, the Ortega family for such great memories, Chris, Bert and Jill for your encouragement, and special thanks to Holly, Bailey and Cortney.

  Note: The Compleat Angler burned to the ground a couple years ago, so the scene herein pays homage to the historic watering hole…

  About the Author

  JOHN H. CUNNINGHAM has a background as eclectic as Buck himself. With over 20 years of experience in commercial real estate, he has also served as the editor of The Pro Review, a magazine for professional photographers. John lives in Virginia with his wife, two daughters, two Portuguese Water Dogs, a Havanese, a cat, his 22 year-old African Grey parrot and a few horses scattered around the countryside. He spends much of his time traveling. His choices for the places and plots that populate the Buck Reilly series include many of the things he loves: Key West, Cuba, the Bahamas, Caribbean settings, along with amphibious aircraft, colorful characters, and stories that concern themselves with the same tensions and issues that affect all of our lives.

  John’s website can be viewed at www.jhcunningham.com.

  Click forward for a special preview of Green to Go, the next Buck Reilly adventure

  GREEN TO GO

  by John H. Cunningham

  1

  Geneva, Switzerland

  “You could’ve at least worn a suit, Buck.”

  Ben was wearing one of my old Armani suits. When you owe someone money, a lot of money, nothing’s sacred. If my linen pants and aqua green fishing shirt weren’t out of place here, my flip-flops were.

  On the table was today’s International Herald Tribune. Typical headlines: Raul Castro’s Funeral … United Nations Troops in Darfur … U.S. Warns Iran … There’s something different, Demonstrations in Peru.

  Just the name of that country brought back memories of fast friends and past adventures. The first paragraph stated that Javier Guzman, one of the candidates in the upcoming presidential election, demanded that the European nations who had stolen thousands of tons of silver from Peruvian soil centuries ago provide just compensation now. His rhetoric had launched a wave of frenetic nationalism across the country.

  Click-clack. Click-clack.

  A tall young woman in a tight blue skirt and starched white blouse marched through the cavernous lobby. Her high heels pounded the granite floor like ball peen hammers. I swallowed but had run dry of saliva. Her blond hair was cropped short and her blue eyes were shielded behind metal-framed glasses. She was a precise beauty.

  “Mr. Reilly?”

  “Yes?” Ben and I said at the same time.

  No smile.

  “Come with me, please.”

  No accent, either.

  We followed her through a metal gate and into a small waiting room. She directed us toward a computer terminal and instructed us to enter our account numbers. Ben went first, and I noticed a small bald patch on the back of his crew cut. My hair was still as thick as ever. Guess that gene must have skipped me. Ben finished, then moved aside.

  Once we were done, a green light lit the screen. So far, so good.

  The woman led us down another hallway and into a smaller room with a table and two chairs. We remained standing.

  “I’ll return momentarily.”

  Ben turned to me when we were alone.

  “I wasn’t sure they’d let us in, considering the investigations into your—”

  “It’s over, Ben. And now’s not the time.” I motioned around the heavily monitored room.

  He shook his head and shifted his focus to the door. With family, the past is always present. Once tagged good or bad, you’re forever judged in that light, especially when the media dumps gas on the fire.

  Moments later, Ms. Personality reappeared pushing a stainless steel cart with what appeared to be a keg sitting on top. She stopped the cart next to the table.

  “Your keys, gentlemen?”

  Ben pulled a chain up from inside the open collar of his shirt. His key was a duplicate to the one I’d stored in my waterproof pouch and hidden below the seat in my 1946 Grumman Widgeon. Mine had been stolen by a Key West art dealer cum Cuban spy named Manny Gutierrez and wound up on the bottom of the Florida straits just outside the Cuban territorial line.

  The woman and Ben stared at me.

  “I don’t have my key.”

  Ben closed his eyes and the woman stood even straighter.

  “I’m sorry, but you must have—”

  “I’ll be using the five-letter code established as an alternate.”

  “Dad’s ciphers? Are you kidding?”

  The woman opened a narrow drawer on the side of the steel cart and withdrew a small apparatus that resembled a credit card machine used in European restaurants.

  “Re-enter your account number, and when prompted, enter the five-space response,” she said.

  The machine nearly slipped from my glistening palms. I caught Ben’s head-shake out of the corner of my eye and his long sigh filled the silence.

  All the different five-letter combinations I’d considered tumbled through my head.

  “There were what, five ciphers?” Ben said. “I tried to figure them out, just out of curiosity, and got nowhere. How could you—”

  “They all led to a last one which was a statement, not a cipher,” I said. “‘Love of my life.’ Guess this is the only way to know for sure.”

  “That’s great, Buck. I financed this trip—you could have told me—this will be the last straw if—”

  “Mr. Reilly, please.”

  I licked my lips and my index finger hovered over the keypad that contained all twenty-six letters of the alphabet, along with the numbers zero through nine.

  “While we’re young, Buck,” Ben said.

  I turned away to shield the keyboard. I pressed a “B” and no alarm sounded, so I continued. “E,” “T,” “T,” “Y.”

  A phrase in what I assumed to be German appeared on the screen. I handed it back to our hostess, who read it and pursed her lips.

  Ben and I stared at her with open mouths.

  “I’ll be back in a moment.” She hugged the small machine as she left.

  Ben turned to me. “You lost the fucking key? Are you kidding me?”

  “Not now, Ben—”

  “After everything—”

  “Drop it.” My gritted teeth stopped him mid-bitch.

  The woman reappeared, alone. From her pocket she removed a key.

  “I’m sorry, I had to retrieve this from the vault. Normally account holders alert us when a key has been lost.”

  “There’s nothing normal about my brother,” Ben said.

  She inserted both keys into slots on top of the cylinder and turned them.

  A green light pulsed.

  “I’ll be in the anteroom. When you’re finished press the button by the door and I’ll return. You may
use the briefcase on the cart if you need one.” She offered enough of a smile that I could see perfect white teeth peeking out from behind her thin pink lips. She closed the door behind her.

  Ben put his hand on the handle next to the keys.

  “Let’s hope you’ll be able to pay me back all the money I’ve lent you,” he said.

  My heart leapt and I slapped my hand on top of his.

  “Can we take a minute to think of Mom and Dad before opening this?”

  He laughed. “Now you want to get sentimental? They would never have had this account—or been in Switzerland at all—if your freaking company hadn’t been cooking its books and cratered. And if you hadn’t warned them—”

  “Then you wouldn’t have inherited all their wealth, so let’s leave it at that, okay?”

  “—There never would have been an accident that killed them, Buck, and I’ll never forget that. You’re just lucky Dodson took the fall.”

  “He was the one who cooked the books, Ben.”

  My partner from e-Antiquity, Jack Dodson, was still in jail after being convicted of fraudulent conveyance of assets. The FBI had been unable to prove the same against me, which is why I was able to flee to Key West with the airplane Ben had reluctantly bought me. Once there I started Last Resort Charters and Salvage. The old flying boat allowed me to make use of the copies of the treasure maps I’d squirreled away when e-Antiquity tanked, but they too were stolen by Manny Gutierrez and lost at sea along with my Swiss Bank key.