Regina, the first girl, looked down and realized she was dripping with dollars, too.
“Oh my gosh, you’re right,” she said, sorting through the bills. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Tina?”
“Hell, yes!” Tina said. “I’m going back in there. This is more than I’ve made all week.”
“Let’s go.”
Troy watched as the newly christened strippers of Islamorada jogged back into the Hog Heaven. They sidestepped someone stumbling out and Troy realized it was his three sailor friends.
“There he is,” Wayne said, through a black eye and a bloody nose. “Grab him!”
“Dangit.”
Troy had found a junk pile of a bike leaning against a tree at the edge of the Hog Heaven parking lot and had pedaled madly without looking back until he was sure that he had outrun the beat up goons chasing him. Wayne had gotten close enough to grab Troy’s shirt and rip it off of him, making him the third topless person in the vicinity tonight. But he had decided not to go back and get it and was now huffing and puffing, covered with a sheen of sweat, and freezing in the night air. He had no way of knowing, but he was pretty sure it must be after midnight. He hunkered down trying to somehow keep the heat sources of his body close together and rode along until he came to the Lorelei Restaurant & Cabana Bar—one of the few places around he knew nothing about.
“Dang Florida Keys and I’m freezin’ my butt off,” he muttered to himself as he pushed open the door … and immediately regretted it.
The dulcet tones of a silky baritone voice crooned the most manly version of I’m Feelin’ Good that he had ever heard. When he found the source of the voice, he saw a … a performer … wearing a skin tight, dazzlingly glittery red dress. Her hair was as black as coal and her face was made up in thick, heavy stage makeup. Pretty in her way, but Troy could tell immediately, she was no she … she was a he. It wasn’t that this sort of thing bothered him that much. Heck, he’d been on stage once back in Savannah at a drag club. No, the issue here was that he was the new guy in a veritable sea of hungry sharks staring at him as he walked in the door—shirtless.
The performer, an obvious professional, saw him and began to take the stairs down from the stage toward him. Troy was reminded of a scene he’d once witnessed on the Discovery Channel about a pack of wolves taking down their prey. They always looked for the weakest in the herd.
Troy was frozen by the sweet sound of her voice and the singer had almost reached him when he suddenly snapped out of his reverie. He waved and backed out of the door and was on his bike again and headed south.
The sounds of a live band drew him toward yet another bar. The side of the rundown building had a drawing of an old wood-sided car and the sign above the building simply said: Woody’s in the Keys.
“Now, this might be my kind of place,” he muttered propping the bike up on the side of the building.
The door announced that if total nudity offends you, do not enter. He hesitated. Another strip joint? Is that a good idea. A cold breeze whipped through the mangroves beside the place and Troy decided that total nudity didn’t offend him as much as freezing to death did.
He pushed open the door. The raw, driving chords of AC/DC’s Back In Black echoed loudly through the bar … oddly, with no drums.
9
Writer’s Block
Chad Harrison, New York Times Bestselling author of eighteen zany, Florida fiction novels, four children’s books, and three collections of his newspaper columns, would never be recognized on the street. Nor would anyone recognize his name. They might, however, know something about Cap Wayfarer—his multi-million-dollar pen name and alter ego. They also might know something of his ex-wife Linda Harrison since she’d been in the news lately cavorting with that hack of a writer R.A. MacDougall.
So what if the guy was the picture of a Greek god and owned a fifty-foot catamaran, on which he was often photographed shirtless, thick, wild, artsy hair fluttering around in the wind. Ugh. The guy got lucky with one stupid book about post-apocalyptic farming community. Seriously? Who reads that crap? thought Chad.
Finally, the phone he held next to his ear connected. “Hello. You have reached the Islamorada Sheriff’s Station. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial—”
Chad angrily punched the zero on the screen. The recording ceased. The line was open, but nothing happened. He could hear vague static in the background, so he could tell the call had connected, but no one said anything.
“Hello?” he said. “Hello, is anyone there?”
A click and a loud squelch caused Chad to jerk the phone away from his head and almost drop his expensive new iPhone—the one that was so new that he hadn’t yet purchased a protective case for it. He put the phone back to his ear to hear a shuffling sound.
“Hello? You still there?” the voice on the line said. “Sorry ’bout that. Forgot to unmute my mic.”
“I’m here, what the heck is going on? I’m trying to reach the Sheriff.”
“Well, friend, you are in luck. This is the Islamorada Sheriff’s Station. Are you having an emergency?”
Chad shook his head angrily. “No. If I had been, I would have done what the recording had told me and hung up and dialed 9-1-1.”
“And that would have been a good thing,” the voice had a lilting southern accent, definitely not a South Florida native. Maybe more like South Carolina. “Well, alright then, have a beautimous day.”
Before Chad could protest, the line went dead. He stared at his phone incredulously. He hung up on me. He scrolled through his recent call list and punched the number again. Without waiting for the recording to start her spiel, he clicked the zero.
Unbelievably, the same clicking and squelching sequence unfolded and he waited until he heard the clear line before speaking.
“I have an emergency,” he said.
The same Southern accent said, “then, I highly recommend you hang up and dial 9-1-1. Thank you for calling.”
Click. The line disconnected.
“You have got to be freaking kidding me,” Chad said, gripping his phone so tight that is spurted from his hand like a bar of soap.
He watched as it cartwheeled up out of his grip, tumbled a few times, and hit the terracotta tile in his kitchen. The supposedly indestructible glass on the front spiderwebbed immediately, sending several slivers and shards skittering across the floor.
“Son of a—” His curse became a growl as he leaned down to retrieve his phone. Using the rationale that he had owned more than a dozen phones in his life and had always paid for the insurance—but never used it, he had declined it on this newest one. A sharp edge caught his pinky finger and bit into it, drawing a minuscule rivulet of blood.
He sighed and dialed 9-1-1.
Click. Squelch. “9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”
Chad felt his mouth drop open. It was the same Southern drawl that he had just spoken to.
“You’re kidding, right?” he asked the operator.
“Son, do you have an emergency or not? We don’t take kindly to prank callers here in Islamorada.”
“Yes. Yes. Please don’t hang up,” Chad pleaded with the man. “I do have an emergency.”
“Okay, then. Just keep calm and tell me who shot who.”
“Huh? Who shot … ? No, um. No one has been shot.”
“Fine, fine. Then who had the knife originally?”
“Sir, with all due respect. There were no weapons of any kind … that I know of.”
“Ah, I see. Domestic dispute? Who hit who first? You hit your wife—or your husband?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” Chad felt he was in imminent danger of getting hung up on again. “Robbery. Yes, that’s it. There was a robbery. I was robbed.”
He could hear the sound of a pencil scratching notes on a pad. And squeaking, maybe the sound of a chair rocking back and forth?
“Uh huh. And what did he look like?”
“What did he look like?”
“Well, yes. Can you describe the perpetrator?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t see the person.”
“Didn’t get a good look at him?” the operator asked.
“No. I mean. I never saw anyone. The item in question is missing.”
“Ah.” The voice sounded suspicious. “And did the item in question go missing when you were a little … um … sauced on the tequila?”
Chad could almost picture the person putting down his pencil and leaning back in his chair.
“No. The item in question is a kayak—a very expensive kayak. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t just misplace it. It is bright orange and very big.”
“Ohhh,” the voice lost its suspicion. “A burglary.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No. You said a robbery. Completely different,” the operator took on a voice that he might also use when explaining to a child how a stove becomes hot. “You see, in a robbery, someone takes something of value directly from another person by the use of force or fear.”
“Okay.” Chad felt obliged to humor the man.
“Burglary involves a person illegally entering a building in order to commit a crime while inside.”
“Well, I don’t think they actually came inside.”
“I’m sorry what?”
“It’s a kayak. I keep it under the house.”
“Locked up with a cable or chain, of course.”
Chad was silent. More pencil scratching.
“I see,” said the voice. “Alright. Give me your name and phone number and I’ll get someone on it as soon as we can.”
Chad puffed up his chest. “Chad Harrison.”
He gave his number and waited for the man to ask for more information. “Okay, Mr. um … Harrison. We will get right on that as soon as possible.”
“I don’t think you understand. I need to speak to the Sheriff directly. This is an emergency that should be his top priority.”
“Sir, we get too many calls that do involve guns and knives (not true) to check out every burglary that happens on the island. Right now, we have a possible serial killer on the loose down here. Maybe you’ve heard of him? The Cowboy Killer?”
“Never heard of him.”
In truth, he had read something in the Miami Herald about the murderer accompanied by the artist’s sketch of the man that might as well have been drawn by a 3-year-old with a crayon.
“Perhaps, instead of chasing a veritable ghost around the island, I suggest you people deal with the real crime here.”
“I will tell the Sheriff, and we’ll get on it as soon as possible.”
“He should definitely consider doing just that since this is an election year and I would hate for my column at Keysnews.com to reflect his indifference to an upstanding, longtime, and influential member of the community.”
The line went silent. He thought he heard the man gulp, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Yes, sir. We’ll get on it ASAP.”
“Thank you.”
Chad hung up and realized that he was now bleeding from his cheek.
“Dammit,” he said, tossing the splintered phone onto the kitchen table.
10
The Cowboy Killer
Sheriff Paul Puckett hung up the phone. He knew exactly who Chad Harrison was and wasn’t taking any chances on the man publishing some kind of exposé in the questionably relevant Keysnews.com. The fact that a mid-list author and ambulance chasing journalist like Harrison was even threatening such a thing was serious enough, but this was an election year, and Puckett was an elected official.
He glanced at the yellow pad he’d been doodling on while Chad was giving his report of stolen goods. It read: Dinner tonight? Chinese? Or pizza?
And then a couple of circles around two words: Orange kayak.
Puckett sighed. “Mark, I’m takin’ the Explorer. Gonna make a few trips around the island, see if I can spot anything that looks like this missing kayak.”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff,” the deputy said. “Keep your eyes open for the Cowboy Killer, too.”
Puckett’s eyes danced across the folder resting in his inbox—a literal inbox on the corner of his desk, not a digital one. He flipped it open to see the communique that had come across the dusty fax machine earlier this morning.
FLORIDA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
MOST WANTED
JOHN DOE
A.K.A. THE COWBOY KILLER
Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution - First Degree Murder (3 Counts)
He scanned the details describing the man and studied the grainy, blurry, pixelated image of the guy taken from security camera footage that did little to nothing to help identify the murderer. Apparently, the guy in the hat—a straw cowboy hat—had knocked over a liquor store up the coast a bit. In the process, he’d murdered the store owner—a jovial, Santa Claus type of guy who was friendly with all the local law enforcement.
“Where you at, cowboy?” Puckett closed the folder, knowing that the Keys were an ideal place to get lost until you could hop a ride on a slow boat to Cuba.
He pulled open the bottom drawer in his filing cabinet. Pushing aside the half-empty bottle of Pepto Bismol and the full bottle of Castillo Silver Rum, he dug out the box of shells. One by one, he slid six of the special edition Buffalo Bore bullets into the cylinder.
Puckett had been around the Keys long enough to know that most folks were just passing through on their way to Key West and anonymity, or to Cuba to disappear all together. This dude had probably gotten enough money—he checked the report, a hundred grand it seemed—to make a new life in some mud hut somewhere on the beaches of Havana. He pulled on his fleece vest and realized it still had the tags on it. He’d never needed it with the average temperature in Islamorada bouncing between sticky swamp ass and just stepped out of the shower. He jerked on the tag and the paper tore loose leaving the plastic twig dangling under his arm.
Screw it, he thought. I’ll cut it off later.
Before he’d made it half a mile from the station, the radio buzzed to life with a report out of the Homestead P.D. Apparently a Latino woman running the late shift at the Tom Thumb had reported a fidgety man purchasing a sack full of Monster energy drinks and spicy beef jerky with crisp, clean one hundred dollar bills. With some interesting translation work, the local detectives had worked out—maybe—that the man had been wearing a straw hat like the one seen in the surveillance video of the so-called Cowboy Killer. Together with the earlier report that put a similar spotting in Hialeah, Puckett knew without a doubt, there was a murderer on his way toward Islamorada and beyond.
He turned the Explorer north and cruised just below the posted speed limit of forty-five. Slowing at every parking lot, shopping center, and gas station, he scanned for anything unusual—a tough ask in the Keys. He saw an old bearded man with a spider monkey riding a unicycle, two women with tattooed bald heads and piercings of every size and shape dangling from their faces (he wondered how they got through flight security checkpoints) and a group of little people dressed in shiny wrestling outfits headed south in the back of a gigantic pickup truck on wheels taller than the occupants.
Without knowing why, he turned onto Plantation Boulevard—maybe intuition, or maybe just to change the scenery. He cruised a little slower and shined his spotlight toward the Coral Harbor Condo. He almost pulled in and wrote a ticket to the woman flipping him off from the third floor, but he didn’t have time for such niceties. Half an hour later, he turned back onto Overseas Highway heading south.
Several times, he found himself drifting along at twenty miles per hour, peering into the mangroves off the side of the road. It was pitch black out there. If the Cowboy Killer wanted to hide here, all he’d have to do is take three steps off the pavement and he’d be invisible. Puckett slapped his steering wheel and pulled off the side of the road in a sandy alcove under a Key Lime tree. He knew he was close to a bunch of charter companies and tourist excursions. Maybe he’d watch the road f
or a bit and pull over a drunk driver or two.
He turned off his lights and pulled the lever to lower his seat back. Or maybe catch forty winks. As soon as his hat slid down over his eyes, his radio squelched, jerking him out of a dream involving … was it Elle MacPherson and Paulina Porizkova … and a vat of whipped cream.
“This better be good, Mark,” he said, clicking the receiver. “I was literally about to become a human banana split with two Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.
“Sorry, boss,” the deputy said. “I got a call from up at Hog Heaven. Family stopped in for a quick bite to eat and found a bar full of topless women.”
Sheriff Paul Puckett shook his head. “Damn tourists. It wouldn’t be the first time a couple of co-eds didn’t have one too many shots and do things they’ll regret tomorrow … if they remember them.”
“Yeah, um,” Mark said, “Seems it might be the waitresses showing their … well, their everything. And the dad was pretty pissed when his adolescent sons got their fries delivered with a motorboat. ”
Puckett sighed. “What? You mean they—? Never mind. I’m on it.”
He put the Explorer in gear and squealed out onto the highway headed back north … again.
He would be surprised to learn later that his unsuccessful napping spot was only five feet from a large piece of bright orange rotomolded polyethylene—a tough, flexible and relatively soft plastic commonly used in the manufacture of kayaks.
11
The Non-Stripping Side
Troy Clint Bodean slipped into his newly-purchased, black tank-top with a 1948 Chevrolet Woody Wagon screen printed poorly across the chest in neon pink. It was scratchy and reeked of cigarette smoke, but it was better than being shirtless among the … well … shirtless employees of this dive bar. He watched as the band somewhat skillfully worked its way through a range of classic hit songs from the seventies to the nineties without a drummer. It was an odd sound, but after a few more beers and a couple of mistakenly poured tequila shots that the bartender had slid his way, he didn’t mind the music at all.
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