The Great Paddleboard Race
Page 7
“He’s there, it’s him for sure!” I shouted as I crashed through the front door.
“Did he see you?”
“See me? I gotta get back right now, I’m getting him some milk.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s taking a bath—wanted me to leave the milk inside the front door.”
Officer Keyes got up and grabbed his holster and then went into the property room and grabbed a shotgun.
“What about Sharon’s plan?” I said.
“I like the bath better. It’s awful hard to use a gun for a washcloth,” he smiled,
“You wait right here George Bailey.”
“What about the milk?”
“Don’t worry, Sally will be making Mr. Proctor’s breakfast for the next couple of weeks.”
Sally’s Diner handled the prisoner’s meals.
34.
Mad Mike glared at me when he walked in, handcuffed, in front of Officer Keyes.
“Thanks for the milk kid,” he snarled.
His hair was still soapy and he was dripping water. He had on a pair of trousers, but no belt. He held up his pants with his handcuffed hands.
“Mike here made it easy for me,” Officer Keyes said, “he was washing his hair. The water was running in the bath so he didn’t even hear me until I stood over the tub with a shotgun pointed right at him.”
“Heck, that even worked better than Sharon’s plan,” I said.
“Don’t tell her that George Bailey,” Officer Keyes said as he led Mad Mike back to his cell. “I’ll have some company for you soon enough Mike – including your landlord.”
It took less than a day to round up Sullivan, Hansen the deckhand and, of course, Jellyfish Johnson.
Jellyfish couldn’t stop crying and was the first to talk. He’d approached Sullivan and Hansen when he needed a chase boat for the race. Sullivan, in addition to being a tuna fisherman for Jake Neeves, was also a runner for Mad Mike in the off-season. A runner would handle the distribution of winnings or loses for a bookie. Sullivan was also an enforcer on the collection of minor gambling debts. If the debt was more money –Mad Mike did his own collecting. He normally stopped short of murder since a dead gambler was really hard to collect from. He made an exception in the case of Mr. Saterbury it turned out. Saterbury had lost more than money to Mad Mike. Mrs. Saterbury had been seeing Mad Mike for over a year.
“Proctor’s the only one whose not talking, George Bailey,” Officer Keyes said, but it’s not hard to figure this one out.”
“Put why did they kill Four Eyes Carson?” I asked.
“Sullivan said they were going to keep towing Jellyfish past Carson too, but then they accidentally ran into him. Four Eyes saw that they were towing Jellyfish and asked if they’d dropped out of the race. Mad Mike came out of the forward cabin with a gun and said: “No pal, but you have.”
Then he joked about how much money he’d made on the parlay.
“Henry was right,” I said.
“Yeah,” Officer Keyes said, “he’s not a bad addition to your agency. With the money you guys are making on these cases, I might just join myself.
35.
One day, before their hearing, I was sweeping in front of the cells when Mad Mike looked up from playing cards with Hansen. We’d put Jellyfish Johnson and Sullivan in the other cell since Mad Mike wasn’t too happy with them for telling us everything.
“Hey kid – I was wondering one thing the other night?” Mad Mike asked.
“What?” I said, staring at the blue mark on the wall made by Four Eyes paddleboard.
“Keyes said something about a plan that your girlfriend had to capture me without anybody getting hurt?”
“She was going to bake up a bunch of cookies with Chocolate Ex –Lax in em and then just leave them by the front door – with a note that said they were free samples for the church fair this weekend.” Sharon figured you’d be too preoccupied after about an hour to put up much resistance.”
“That’s not a bad plan – I would have been caught in the same room,” he said.
“She’s had better ones,” I said.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction, which means I made it all up. Any relationship between the people in this story and real people is an accident -- except that I put a picture of my Dad at the start of the book.
George Bailey Hershman raced paddleboards for the Manhattan Beach Surf Club in the late 1930’s. When I was a boy there were pictures of Dad holding some trophies for Paddleboard racing. I even remember one or two of the trophies. I don’t know what happened to them. Dad told me he won a race around the Los Angeles Breakwater.
Lots of towns along the coast had teams in those days. Hoppy Swarts was a famous surfer of that era. He wore thick glasses and someone once said that Hoppy rode such big waves because he couldn’t see how big they were.
The other three books in the George Bailey Series are available on Amazon.
Bucket of Fish
Stolen Diving Suit
Missing Mamba
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