The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller)

by Lowe, Tom

  Agent Keyes lips grew tight. “We pulled your background. Went all the way back to when you came out of your mama. O’Brien, I believe you have issues.”

  He waited for me to respond. I said nothing. He rocked on the balls of his wingtips for a second. “Thirteen years with Miami-Dade homicide. Internal Affairs ran two separate investigations into your Dirty Harry tactics. A tour of duty in the Middle East. Places we know about include Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. A lot of your file seems to be, shall we say, incomplete.”

  I said, “Classified is a better word.”

  Agent Tim Jenkins added, “Dan, let’s cut to the chase with Mr. O’Brien.” He touched the tip of his nose. I could see that he’d lost a piece of his small finger, first joint to the nail gone. “O’Brien, I really don’t give a rat’s ass about any issues you may or may not have. I don’t give a shit about fitting you into some neat profile.”

  “Profile? You’re trying to color me with your paint-by-numbers illustrations when you have Pablo Gonzales and his minions growing pot on America soil.”

  “Was Izzy Gonzales out there?” asked Agent Flores, her eyes absorbing the room.

  “If you didn’t find him that means someone took his body.”

  “He’s dead?” the ICE man asked.

  “Yeah.”

  There was a short knock at my door. Agent Keyes instinctively reached under his coat, his hand touching the pistol grip.

  EIGHTY-NINE

  Two nurses came into my room, ignored the federal agents, one older nurse saying, “We need to check your vitals. Looks like you’ll be leaving us soon. You were a quart low when you came in. Now, you’re humming along fine.”

  “Where are my clothes?”

  “You might want to toss those out, hon. They looked like you’d worn them in a war. What’s left of them are in the closet.”

  Dave said, “I brought you a fresh change of clothes.”

  The nurses left and Agent Jenkins asked, “What happened to Izzy Gonzales?”

  “He was a millimeter away from squeezing a .45 into my head. I managed to be a little faster. Did you find Frank Soto?’’

  “You mean did we find his body?” asked Agent Keyes.

  “Did you find him dead or alive?”

  Detective Sandberg said, “No, unfortunately, we didn’t.

  Agent Jenkins added, “We found two dead gang members wearing AB tats, three soldiers who looked like growers—one of them blown in half on the bombing range, and Palmer swaying from a tree. Anything we missed?’’

  “Yeah, Ed Crews, the park ranger. He was working for them.”

  “What?” asked Agent Keyes, his eyebrows lifting.

  I said, “I know it’s hard to believe, someone on the government payroll. But it’s true. He was the eyes and ears, giving them the green light to grow, pack and ship.”

  “You’d better just start from the beginning,” said Agent Flores.

  I told them everything I could remember. They took notes, no one interrupting me. They acknowledged seeing the video camera bolted to the tree. I asked, “Do you know where the images were being seen?”

  Agent Flores said, “No, not yet, but maybe that’s where we’ll find Pablo Gonzales.”

  “If you can find Izzy’s body, you might find Uncle Pablo,” I said. “Someone must have taken the body out of the forest as Soto and his squad chased Billie and me.”

  Agent Jenkins looked at the setting sun through the window, its light was a smoldering red flame heating the belly of a purple cloud. He said, “The body could be on its way to Mexico. Finding it would be like hitting the lotto.”

  I smiled. “If you have the right numbers, you hit the lotto. If you have GPS coordinates to Izzy Gonzales, you’d be able to find the body within fifteen feet, anywhere in the world.”

  Agent Keyes inhaled, his eyes rolling slightly as he said, “Sounds like a hypothetical road to me, O’Brien.”

  I looked at Dave, a glint in his eye. “Dave, would you write down the password and username for Agent Keyes?”

  “Absolutely,” he said jotting them on a piece of paper and handing it to Keyes.

  “What’s this?” Keyes asked.

  I said, “It’s a computer password and username that will let you follow a GPS tracker I put in Gonzales’ shorts after he died. My back was facing the video camera, so chances are Pablo didn’t see me do it.”

  The federal agents said nothing. The hum of the cold air through the vent over my bed was the only sound. Detective Sandberg finally said, “You dropped a tracker in a dead man’s fucking shorts?”

  “It’s probably the last place they’ll look.”

  Agent Flores smiled, her direct eyes looking softer. She said, “Thank you, Mr. O’Brien. We will take everything from here. You can disengage.”

  Agent Jenkins said, “That’s not going to be easy. Unfortunately, Pablo Gonzales will think you owe him your life, and he’ll send someone to collect. We’ll do what we can to protect you. You might want to take a long vacation somewhere far away.”

  I said, “I hear the weather in Mexico is great this time of year.”

  “Don’t even think about going in that direction,” warned Agent Keyes. He turned to Detective Sandberg and said, “It might be a good idea to have a deputy on duty all night outside Mr. O’Brien’s room.”

  Detective Sandberg touched a spot on his cheek, his face filled with unsettling thoughts, much like a man awaking from a lethargic sleep, not sure whether to simply sit at the edge of the bed or take a step into the steel gray beginning of an overcast morning.

  NINETY

  The next afternoon, after the doctor’s final inspection, I called Elizabeth and said, “I’m heading to the marina. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Dave told me what happened. How’s your shoulder?”

  “It’s in a sling. Doctors say it’ll heal quickly. There was more blood loss than bone or muscle tissue destroyed. I was lucky.”

  “What happened to your Indian friend?”

  “Joe Billie was injured. I think he’s okay now, but he’s MIA. Joe treated both of us out in the forest with herbs and things. It probably saved our lives. I’ll tell you more when I get to the boat.”

  “I heard what they did to Luke Palmer. When I learned how they’d murdered him, I took a long shower. I felt like my skin was going to split. Now I know everything he said had to be true… how they killed Molly and Mark. I don’t know if I will ever sleep again without waking to horrible images of what happened moments before Gonzales shot Molly.” Her voice cracked. “Sean, it was awful thinking what they could have been doing to you, too. You didn’t have to go back in that forest. You went in there to protect me, I know that, and I want you to know how grateful I am.”

  “What’s important is that you’re alive. Just stay there until I can get to the boat. Is Nick there?”

  “He was here less than five minutes ago. Dave just left to pick you up. They, and the other marina folks here, have been so thoughtful. You’re fortunate to have such good friends. I’ll make you a country breakfast, something to chase that hospital food away.”

  “I’d like that.”

  I SIGNED DISCHARGE PAPERS and waited for Dave outside the hospital. The morning sky was a soft blue, the air warm and filled with the scent of blooming roses in the breeze. My cell rang. Maybe Dave was calling to see if I had eaten breakfast. Or it could be someone looking to charter my boat.

  First mistake, not looking at the caller ID.

  Second mistake, speaking first. “I’m standing outside, the patient pick-up area.”

  “Good. You will make a very easy target, Mr. O’Brien.’’

  The voice was deep and soft, exuding an air of total command. I could detect a slight accent, but it was distant, like trying to hear the surf in a seashell on a windy day. I held the phone tighter against my ear. “You know my name. But I don’t know yours.”

  “Really, Mr. O’Brien? I think you do know my name. I share the same surname
as my nephew, Izzy, the man you murdered.”

  I said nothing. Above my head, palm fronds clattered in the wind.

  “I believe you are a very resourceful man, Mr. O’Brien. I saw how you and your friend escaped, and I heard how you managed to flee a second time.”

  “It’s amazing how a bomb can be the great equalizer.”

  “Perhaps you will not be so fortunate the next time.”

  “Where’s Frank Soto and Ed Crews?”

  “What makes you think I know those names?”

  “I assume Soto is still with you.”

  He was silent.

  “What do you want, Gonzales?”

  “Want? I want for nothing. I long for something, though. I long for you to reach a state of timelessness.”

  I watched traffic move slowly across a bridge over the Halifax River, the morning sun a golden halo rising above the tree line. I could see Dave’s car coming down the road, beyond the sprinklers arching water across the Saint Augustine grass. “Your nephew was less than a second from blowing my head off. What would you have done, Gonzales?”

  “You caused a major disruption in my business. You have killed my nephew and some of my men because you chose to pursue something you should have left alone.”

  “When your sociopath nephew shot two college kids and buried them under a rotting deer carcass, he chose to make it my business.”

  “Let me make something very clear to you.” Gonzales’ voice lowered. I could hear the anger being suppressed beneath his words. He said, “I have no intention of killing you. No, you see, Mr. O’Brien, that would be too rapid an exit. I spoke of longing to put you in a state of timelessness. It is something the greatest author in my nation, Garcia Marquez, wrote about in the world’s best book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Do you think you are a solitary man, Mr. O’Brien, living alone in that house on the river? No, you are not even close to solitude.”

  I said nothing.

  “I can hear your heart beating, O’Brien. When I am done with you, your heart will be the only organ moving in your body. In Marquez’ novel, he writes of yellow butterflies following Mauricio Babilonia around wherever he walked, even to his lover’s home. If you know the story, O’Brien, you may remember that Babilonia had an unfortunate accident. His spine was shattered. For the rest of his life, he was kept in a nursing home with a diaper on his ass. His poor lover, Meme, was so traumatized, she became mute. Your lover, Elizabeth, will have her tongue cut out. I will shoot your friends. And you will have your spine shattered. You shall be a prisoner of your own body, your own waste, locked in motionless solitude, a man who can only move his eyes. I will look you in the eye as I reduce you to human putty… putty that never hardens. Your morning erection will never again rise to greet the sun.”

  “Gonzales, you are a man of things, possessions. One of your possessions, Izzy, will stay here. His body won’t be returned to Mexico. They’re going to cremate it and mix the ashes with cow shit to sell as fertilizer. Imagine your nephew’s ashes being used to grow pot for a rival cartel. His lost soul inhaled into the lungs of some pimp waiting for his crack whore to turn a trick. Sort of gives a whole new definition to your nephew being smoked, don’t you think?”

  His voice changed to a whisper. “O’Brien, you are doomed to the mistakes of your inbred ancestors. Marquez had your people in mind when he wrote, because you have a dysfunctional gene that gives you a mold to make the same mistakes your forefathers did. I have been fated to break that mold. But when I render you into putty, it will be like castration. And then your seed dies on the vine.”

  Gonzales disconnected. I gripped my cell phone so hard the screen went black.

  NINETY-ONE

  On the way from the hospital to Ponce Marina, I told Dave what Pablo Gonzales said before he hung up on me.

  Dave said, “Gonzales’ reprisal is fueled by money and false family justice. He may have his nephew’s body. There was a reading on the GPS tracker for a short time, and then nothing.”

  “What was the last location?”

  “The body was in the Tampa Bay area, someone moving it constantly. Gonzales could be trying to load it on a freighter, one with a good deep freeze.”

  “Maybe the feds closed in before you lost the tracker’s signal.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’d want to stake-out wherever it stopped, then send in the vests with guns drawn and hope Gonzales wants a shootout.” Dave stopped at a railroad crossing as the flashing gates were descending, the sound of a train horn in the distance. He adjusted an air conditioning vent to blow cold air toward his flushed face. “Now it’s a vendetta against you, Sean. Some Old World bravado whereby Gonzales won’t rest until he gets his family retribution, and in this case, rendering you a paraplegic.”

  The train rumbled across the tracks in front of us, pockets of sunlight flickering through the boxcars resembling bursts of light from flash frames in an old movie reel. Dave watched the train for a moment and then turned to me. “You mentioned Gonzales’ reference to Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. In that novel, the workers at a banana plantation are mowed down under machinegun fire as they attempt to strike. Thousands of bodies are tossed into boxcars, like those in front of us, and the bodies were shipped to the coast where they were dumped in the ocean. Shark feed. You said some of the workers in the pot fields came at you and Billie with machetes drawn.”

  “They did.”

  Dave nodded. The last boxcar in the train zipped by, and the crossing gates lifted. He put the car in gear. “Maybe somewhere in Gonzales’s operation, somewhere in his sick brain, maybe he’s reenacting imagery from what he considers to be the world’s best book, One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

  As Dave pulled into the Ponce Marina lot I said, “So to profile Pablo, all we have to do is read between the lines in Marquez’s novel, and we’ll have an idea what motivates a narcissist killing machine.”

  “Or at least what may have influenced him.”

  “Look at how the Koran and the Bible have influenced generations.”

  “Some biographers also have drawn parallels between the book of Genesis and Marquez’s story.”

  I wedged the Glock under my belt as we headed down L dock, glad to be taking in the scent of the sea. Mullet jumped in the tidal waters. A fishing boat loaded with tourists chugged into the Halifax River, making its way to Ponce Inlet and the ocean. A fisherman on M dock cast a line toward the leaping mullet. He wore a baseball cap, watched the charter boat and puffed a cigar as he adjusted the drag on his line.

  Dave stopped walking and said, “Your Jeep will be ready tomorrow. Except for the stitches in your shoulder, and the fact a self-absorbed little drug lord wants your head, I’d say things are getting back to normal around here. In no time, we’ll be our regular, old marina community of miscreants, misfits and pirates.”

  “There’s no place like home.”

  Dave scratched at his salt and pepper stubble on his chin. “What are you going to do about Elizabeth?”

  “What do you mean, about?”

  “If it wasn’t safe for her earlier, it has to be like living on the absolute edge now.”

  “Pablo Gonzales is looking for me. I don’t think Elizabeth has any value to him anymore. Izzy’s dead. But before he died, he didn’t know Elizabeth couldn’t ID him. Neither did Frank Soto and ranger Ed. They killed Luke Palmer to prevent his possible testimony, but now Izzy’s death makes it all moot.”

  Dave watched a white pelican sailing over the bay, its snowy feathers reflecting off the water. He said, “Vengeance is a savage but universal motivation, one shared among sociopaths and, unfortunately, many others in our species. Pablo Gonzales, the poster boy of psychopaths, will come for you like Santa Anna crossing the Texas border 150 years later. Elizabeth isn’t safe on your boat.”

  “I know.”

  Dave leaned up against the dock railing. He scanned the moored boats behind me. I wat
ched the fisherman make a second cast, his detached glance drifting around the marina like the tawny smoke from his cigar.

  Dave said, “I made a couple of calls, did a little research. Pablo Gonzales has everything money can buy as a drug lord. Most likely, he has hundreds of corrupt officials in his pocket. He has an arsenal that many small nations would envy. One thing he doesn’t have is a sex life. Pablo suffered a horrid bout with the mumps as a teenager. It settled in his balls and rendered him sterile and impotent. Consequently, no children. He contracted a disease that was eradicated in the states. So Izzy was the son he never had. Perhaps this explains his threats to you, the reference to castration. His raging bull, his non-realized fantasy, may be sexual in nature. A testosterone level extinguished by disease not desire.”

  I said nothing.

  Dave added, “Maybe the feds will find him. Maybe they won’t. There’s one man I feel sure would help if I asked him. And, as far as I’m concerned, he’s the only man I know that can help you at this point, and Sean… you need help.”

  “Who’s this man?”

  “You remember Cal Thorpe, of course.

  “AKA Eric Hunter. He worked on the case that brought down the FBI breach.”

  “At one time, I thought Thorpe was the best field operative our country has ever produced. And then you came along, Sean. You set a trap that caught the breach, and I knew at that point Cal Thorpe could learn something from you.”

  “It was a collective effort. I didn't do it alone—”

  “My only point in this reference is the fact that you worked with Thorpe at that time, and I believe you could use his skills right now.”

  “Does this mean you think that agents Flores, Jenkins, Keyes and the rest of their team can’t prevent Pablo Gonzales from keeping his assassins from me?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think one was just here. Casing us.”

  NINETY-TWO

  The twin diesels aboard a fifty-foot Ocean Sports Fisherman, three slips down from us, cranked in a cloud of exhaust smoke that floated over the marina in a bluish fog.