“S
o
what do you want?” I said.
“I want to find out who killed Susan and why. I want what you want.”
“Why look through my stuff? You could have asked me.”
“You
would have lied. You’re an ex-con, remember.”
Well
, she had a point. I decided to cut her some slack, besides I needed a place to hang for a few days. I also decided to play my next card.
“Who’s Jake Lockman?”
For a few moments Hilary just stared at me. When she spoke I caught a bit of anger in her voice.
“He’s a bum. How do you know about him?”
At least she was up to speed on something.
“
He sent me a letter about Susan’s death. Just before I got out, I called him.” I then told her the gist of his call and about the condo and of my suspicions.
“I’m not sure about the pimp part,” said Hilary. “I don’t think he’s that smart, but he’s a bum
and probably one of the reasons why Susan is dead.”
When
I asked if she thought he killed her, she said, “No, but he liked to gamble and do drugs. He owes a lot of people money. I know Susan told him about you and the money. He probably used that to buy himself some time with whoever was holding his markers. He hung around the Casino where Susan worked from time to time. Always trying to make a score at the tables, but I heard he was barred from the place because of all the money he owed.”
As Hilary told me the whole story about Lockman and Susan and how she had met Susan, her eyes started to water. By the time she finished her story, she was into a full cry out. I handed her a paper towel from
a roll on the kitchen counter.
“Thanks,” she said.
“They’re your paper towels,” I said.
We sat talking about Susan longer than I wanted to. I needed a set of wheels. Riding around on the back of Hil
ary’s Honda was not my idea of public transportation. I needed some money and to get that I had to get to a place called Turtle Point, just north of Rainbeau, Georgia.
“You know anyone with a car they would loan you for a few days?”
Looking up she asked, “Why?”
“Because I need a car for a few days and since you are the only one I know in this town, you
’re it.”
“I don’t know. I would have to ask around. They are probably going to want some money from me.”
“How much,” I said.
“
A hundred dollars.”
“
I have thirty-five dollars on me and I can throw thirty bucks in until I get to Rainbeau. How much can you throw in the pot?” I didn't tell her about the two bills under my left foot.
“You want me to go with you?”
“You know someone else in this town I know with a driver’s license?” I said.
“No.”
“Well, there you have it. Call someone and get a car. I’ll make it worth their while.”
“What, you going to part with the five dollar bill?”
“Trust me,” I said.
“That’s what all the johns say.”
I watched her get up off the floor and walk across the room. Picking up her cellphone, she punched in some numbers and put the phone up to her ear. If she was going to give me up, now was as good a time as any.
“Sammy. This is Hilary. I need to borrow your car for a few days. Yes
, I’ll give you a hundred dollars. Yes, I will bring it back with a full tank of gas. Okay. I will be right over.”
After she
punched off her phone, Hilary said, “You have the thirty-dollars?”
“Thirty-five,” I said.
“I figured I would go all in.”
“That’s white of you,” said Hilary.
Walking over to the sack that I had brought from prison, I took out my small roll of prison money. I thought about the money under my foot, but I decided it was better to keep Hilary committed for now. I gave her the rest of my prison money and kept the two hundred for a rainy day.
“Here,” I said. “Try to make it last.”
Taking the money from me, she turned and walked to the back of her trailer and took a box down from a shelf, lifted the lid and took out a hand full of cash and started to count out more money. When she was done, she put the box back and walked to the front door.
“How do you know I won’t take your money and run,” I said.
“You can’t go anywhere. You don’t know the town and you probably can’t ride a bike.”
Chapter 8
I
watched Hilary walk across the lot to a trailer, four trailers down. I spotted a four door sedan parked in front that had one of those ‘donut’ tires on the rear wheel behind the passenger side of the car. The only thing the car had going for it was it had four wheels. Once I reached Turtle Point, the car would have served its purpose. From there the car had to make it to Savannah where I planned on picking up a better one.
When Hilary came back, she wa
s driving the car. I watched her park it and come inside.
“I thought I asked for a car not a hearse
,” I said.
“Look
, Lou, around here you take what you can get. You want me to give it back?”
When we left, I asked her if she knew where
Rainbeau was. She pointed north.
Before we left, she packed up a few things and the box full of money.
“You saving for a rainy day?” I asked, pointing at the box.
“Th
at’s the grad school I probably will never go to.”
It took
us two hours to get to Rainbeau. It was straight up I-95. When we reached the town’s exit, I told her she had to go a little further north to an exit called New River.
“So w
e’re not going to Rainbeau, I take it.”
“Close enough
,” I said. “Get off at exit sixty-seven and turn right. Just past a little building called The Littlest Church in America, take a left on Turtle Ridge Road.”
Hilary shook her head
and said, “I have to hand it to you. You sure can hang out in some strange places.”
“I didn’t pick it,” I said.
“By the way, I think we are being followed. Two shooters in a red car picked us up as we passed the Jacksonville Airport exit.”
“You sure,” said Hilary with
tension in her voice.
“Pretty sure,” I said. “Keep going and we’ll see if they get off with us.”
“Where did the name Turtle Point come from?”
“
The place had been a nesting place for a particular type of sea turtle. It was also the site for a small airfield for local use. When World War II came along, the Army took it over and built a larger landing area to train pilots to track German subs off the Georgia coast. The base ended the place’s use as a turtle sanctuary.”
“Bet they couldn’t do that today,” said Hilary.
“Not so sure about that,” I said. “Anyway, when the Army bought up all of the land around the point and put the airfield here, the name stuck, but the turtles moved on.”
“There a runway on the place?”
“At one time,” I said, “but it was pretty torn up when I last saw it.”
“How come you know so much about this place?”
“I had fifteen years to think about it,” I said.
“How did you find this place?”
“I didn’t. Henry Lowe did. Lowe served as an aircraft mechanic in the war and worked here while he completed his service. Besides, at the time, I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter.
“
After about six miles you are going to see a sign for a wildlife center, but it should be abandoned, at least it was when I was last here,” I said. “Pull in there and wait for me to open the gate. The place still looks abandoned. No need to worry about visitors. Nothing more than a couple of old buildings, some torn up runways and ponds for wildlife in the area and two of the biggest gators I ever saw.”
“How many gators have you seen so far?” asked Hilary.
“Just these two, but they’re big enough.”
Other than the sign being knocked to one side, ever
ything looked pretty much the same.
After driving through the gate, I walked back to close
the gate and looked to be sure the car I had seen earlier was still tailing us. When I saw a flash of red at a bend about two miles down the road, I walked back to the car and got in and gave Hilary the good news.
“It looks like we are
still being followed,” I said.
Turning toward me with a look of fear, Hilary said, “How do you know?”
“Trust me,” I said. “They’re driving a red Mustang convertible. They might as well have rented an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Only thing better would have been a flashing red light on top.”
“What are we going to do?”
The fear in Hilary’s eyes was still there.
“Kill’e
m, if I’m lucky,” I said.
“You have a gun?”
“That’s my problem. I don’t,” I said. “I’ll have to improvise.”
“Oh God. What are we
going to do?”
“
Calm down. I’m better at this than you might think.
“
Okay. We have a change of plans. Keep following the road until you come to the first airfield. I’m going to get out just past that big tree,” I said, pointing to a large pecan tree on the right.
“
After I get out, you keep going. As you go around the next bend, there’s going to be an old runway on your right. Turn onto the runway and head for a large tree on your left. You will see a sign that says ‘Ramp’. You will see a lake to the right of the sign. Stop near the sign and wait for me.”
“
Where are you going?”
“As I said, a lot of things have changed since I was last here.”
“Who owns that big house over there?”
“I forget,” I said. “Years ago, before the Army messed with the place it used to be part of a plantation where they grew tobacco.
“I later learned that the place had been a gambling house and home to a bunch of Savannah mobbed up guys running hookers.”
“
With the windows all knocked out, the house looks like an old lady with no teeth,” observed Hilary.
“
Yeah, well, we haven’t time to do any remodeling,” I said. “I’ll meet you by the ramp.”
I really didn’t want to tell Hilary what I planned on d
oing. Killing someone and actually doing it can cause a problem. I already had enough of those. My hope was that I could avoid it, but that was not always possible.
“
By the way, does your friend have a tire iron in the trunk of this heap?” I asked.
Opening her
door, Hilary got out and said, “She must have if she’s got this donut wheel on.”
Opening the
car’s trunk she reached in and pulled a tire iron out and handed it to me, flashing me a ‘Don’t leave me look’, but I was already walking away.
Chapter
9
Fiftee
n
years ago I buried fifteen million dollars taken from the Golden Slipper Casino robbery in three, fifty gallon drums. Henry Lowe had left the drums in one of the abandoned maintenance sheds on the old airbase. He had sprayed them with a water resistant sealer on the inside and coated them with tar on the outside to prevent any corrosion affecting the metal. As an extra precaution, the money was divided and stored in waterproof duffle bags, five hundred thousand dollars to a bag. There were thirty bags with ten bags to a drum. I had scratched an “X” on one of the drums with a screw driver so that I would know which one had the weapons and ammunition Lowe had insisted we store inside as a precaution, in addition to the money.
When I reached the gator hole
, I looked around to make sure the two gators were not sitting nearby waiting for lunch. Lowe had said that the gators could live for fifty years or more. At least twelve feet long and weighing around seven hundred pounds each, Lowe said they would make good watch dogs. The moment I saw them, they had my vote.
The hiding
place was all that remained of a large tree that had rotted away at its base leaving a deep pit of about ten feet or more wide and maybe twenty feet deep in the pond.
I retrieved a treated four by four from one of the nearby sheds and using one of the large limbs from
the dead tree as a fulcrum, set the four by four on one of the knobs of the tree and lifted the marked drum out of the hole. Then I swung it over to the side of the pit and set it on the ground. Taking the flat end of the tire iron, I popped open the lid and removed the top bag. Looking around to be sure Hilary hadn't tailed me, I put the lid back and resealed it and put the drum back in the pit. Stepping back, I opened the duffle bag and saw that the money was still there in the waterproof wraps in stacks of ten, twenty and fifty dollar bills. A smaller waterproof bag next to the money held the weapons, a Glock-17 and a Walther PPK, along with the ammunition for each.
Opening th
e bag, I took out the two pistols and dry fired them to make sure they were still good to go. Then I took clips for both revolvers and inserted them and shoved the PPK behind my back. I left the rest of the ammunition and clips in the weapons bag and returned it to the duffel bag with the money. The clips were loaded with nine millimeter hollow point ammo.
After putting the drum back in the water
, I thought about all the time I sat in my cell thinking about this day. I had always feared that some gator would find the drums and eat the money or worse, some over curious game warden or hunter would find them and was now living in retirement bliss.
I p
opped the clip back out of the Glock, racked back the slide and dry fired it again just to be sure everything was working fine. It still smelled of the gun oil I had used before hiding it. I took the box of shells and stuffed them into my coat pocket along with the extra clip. I put the clip back in the Glock and racked a shell into the chamber as I walked back to Hilary and the car.
B
y now the two following us had found Hilary and put a plan in motion to use her as bait to get me out in the open. I could see the red car parked next to the piece of junk we had picked up from Hilary’s friend. I was right about it being a Mustang convertible. I saw one of them holding Hilary with a gun to her head. It was the canary man who made a run at me just outside the prison gate a few days ago. The other one, who I called Bimbo, had walked down one of the paths to a pond looking for me. When he didn’t find me, he raised his hands and cupped them to his mouth.
“Hey Malloy
, we got your woman. Come out or we’re going to start to hurt her.”
Button guys
were not the brightest souls in the world. That’s why they do what they do for a living. They are not paid to think. Both of them had their backs toward me and were looking down one of the paths to another pond. But for Hilary, I could have easily shot them both.
My plan was a simple one.
After walking up behind the one holding Hilary, I was going to hit him as hard as I could. Then, as that guy went down, I was going to clear Hilary from the line of fire and put a bullet into the other one doing the yelling. That was my plan. Whatever happened, I wanted to take them alive. When I got two feet from the one holding Hilary, she turned. Seeing me, she yelled at the top of her lungs.
“Lou, help me for God’s sake.”
Before I could do anything, the one holding Hilary jerked his gun toward me. I shot him in the head as he turned, scattering his brains all over the car we had been driving and Hilary, along with everything else that was within a ten foot radius. The one with the face that looked like a pound of hamburger, turned like some actor in a crime movie, and began running back toward me holding his weapon in a two hand grip.
Without any additional movement on my part
, I shot him twice. Once in the right thigh and once in the shoulder joint of his left arm spinning him around like a top. The hollow point round nearly blew his arm off. When he hit the ground he started flopping around like a chicken, screaming at the top of his lungs. I walked over and told him to settle down or I was going to have to kill him. He stopped.
“What’s your name
fat boy?” I said. When he didn't answer I stepped on his injured shoulder. He started yelling again. After kicking him a few times he stopped.
“I’m not going to ask again.”
“Mickey.”
“As i
n Mickey Mouse,” I said.
“No.”
He was the talkative type.
“Who sent you
, Mickey? And if you tell me Walt Disney I’m going to put one in your other shoulder and you’re going to need someone real friendly to hold your unit while you pee.”
“Some guy in Atlanta named Garcia.”
“I don’t know anyone named Garcia. Why me and why Garcia,” I said.
“I don’t know. I’m not paid enough to know either,” he said.
His answer made some sense.
“Where can I find these people in Atlanta?”
“
Some club on a road called Howell Mill.”
“
That the best you can do?” I said.
He decided not to say anything more.
“I get it, you’re a tough guy?”
I shot him in the other shoulder. Can’t say I didn’t warn him.
“Shit, I need a doctor.”
“All in good time
,” I said. “Now, tell me again. Who sent you?”
“Ah…Some guy named Garcia. Runs a club in Atlanta. That’s all I got.”
Bending down, I said, “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Standing up, I said, “What good are you,” and shot him in the head.
“What the hell are you doing?”
yelled Hilary.
I was getting tired of the screaming. However, I could see Hilary’s point. She was jumping around hysterically while flicking brain matter off of her face and clothes. S
he was not a happy camper.
“Calm down,” I said. “You are alive. Count your bles
sings.”
“Fuck you
, Malloy. You just made me an accessory to two murders.”
“You keep it up
, I may go for three,” I said. “We couldn't keep them alive. They knew it, but before we get into all that, help me get these bodies into that pond over there.”
“
What are you planning to do with them?” Hilary asked.
“It’s feeding time. The two gators in this pond will have a feast. Come on,” I said.
Before I dumped the bodies into the pond, I stripped them of their clothing. Then I took the tire iron and scooped out a hole and stuffed their clothes in the hole and covered them up. Walking back to the car we drove up from Jacksonville, I got in and started it.
“Wh
ere are you going to do with Sammy’s car?” asked Hilary.
“
On the other side of that big tree is a bend in the river and the water swirls around making a hole about sixty feet deep. The car will make a great place for breeding crabs and fish.”
After
walking back from dumping the car, I saw that Hilary was still upset. She probably thought she was next. Standing next to the driver’s side of the Mustang, I told her to get in while I put all our stuff along with the duffle bag of money and weapons, into the trunk.
“I can’t believe you did that
,” she said.
“What,” I said.
“You dumped those bodies in that lake like they were rocks.”
“Not really,” I said. “More like food. T
he gators and cotton mouths will eat like kings and make short work of them.”
“What am I going to tell my friend about her car,” she said.
“What’s to tell? I just did her a favor. Besides, the car was collateral damage. When we get back to Jacksonville you will give her some money, money enough for her to get a better car and she can buy her own gas. But I have an even better question.”
“What
?”
“How about telling me who you really are?”