Geezer Paradise (29 page)

             
"Willey," I said.  Find the circuit breaker and shut off the electricity."  Willey practically flew down the stairs. 

             
Mrs. Flaherty kept saying, "Who brought that animal in here?"  I went into the ballroom and moved in close to the table Oscar was standing on.  I put my tray on the table and tried to catch Oscar's eye, but he was too far gone and having too good a time showing off to notice me.  It seemed like forever before the room went dark.  I rushed forward and grabbed Oscar.  He spilled his champagne down my neck.  I headed for the nearest door with Oscar in my arms.  I went through the door and found myself outside.  Oscar was chirping. 

             
"Shut up," I said.  When we got back to the raft, Willey was giving Snydely hell for not watching Oscar. 

             
"There was nothing I could do," Snydely whined.  "One minute he was here and the next, he was halfway to the house."  We jumped into the raft, grabbed the paddles and took refuge in the darkness of the Florida night.

             
As we paddled Willey said, "I told you we could do it, Barney." 

             
"We got lucky," I said.

             
On the way back to the safe-house we stopped at an office supply store to pick up some padded envelopes.  Then we stopped at a package store.  When we got back to the house we put Oscar to bed.  Willey and I put on our rubber gloves again, and I went to work hand printing the note:

Dear Attorney General,

Enclosed please find one plastic bag containing a flash drive.  Please handle the flash drive carefully, as it has the fingerprints of Mr. John Flaherty on it, the owner of the Flaherty Construction Company.

             
The enclosed flash drive contains the true records of Flaherty Construction's accounts, as recorded by Mister Flaherty himself.  If you study the accounts you will see they have no similarity to the set of books he keeps on record. 

Sincerely,

A concerned citizen

             
Willey opened the package and pulled one envelope out.  He held it open and I dropped the flash drive into it.  Then I carefully folded the note and put it in with the flash drive.  Willey pulled the covering strip off the pre-glued tab and sealed the envelope.  We put just a little more than enough stamps on it, and I hand lettered the name and the address of the Attorney General's office in Tallahassee on the front of the envelope, and printed PERSONAL at the bottom.  We dropped the envelope into a paper bag and we were ready to go. 

             
"We can't mail it from here," I said.  "The postmark would give our location away.  In the morning we'll drive about forty miles north and find a mailbox.  Until then the envelope stays in this paper bag.  That way we don't put our finger prints on it."  We retired to the front porch to drink beer and relax.  Snydely drank a certain brand of Bordeaux wine.  We couldn't turn on the overhead porch light without being seen from the road, so we turned on a lamp in front of a window inside the house.  It threw just enough light through the window from behind us.  We could see, but from the road we were just dark shadows. 

             
"So, do you think the Attorney General will take it seriously?" Snydely asked.

             
Willey said, "According to Eduardo, the Attorney General is on a jihad to find the person who killed his father, and it makes sense it was Flaherty."  I couldn't help it, I sank a little deeper into my soft chair when he said that. 

             
"Flaherty is tied to it two ways," Willey said.  "First, the Attorney General was investigating Flaherty at the time of the murder.  And second, it was also a warning to the bookkeeper Flaherty tried to kill, who was also in that nursing home."

             
Snydely was starting to mellow out from the wine.  "Flaherty is the only person with a motive to kill the Attorney General's father," he said.  "It has to be him.  I think the Attorney General will latch onto this.  The information we're sending him is so detailed it has to be authentic.  It's sure to have Flaherty's finger prints on it.  That ties him to the accounts.  It's enough to nail the bastard."

             
Just then Willey's phone rang.  Willey looked at the small screen.  "It's Eduardo," he said and clicked the phone on. 

             
"Hi, Eduardo, how are you?" Willey asked.  Then he went silent while Eduardo talked.  After a minute Willey said, "Hold on and I'll ask him."

             
"Barney, Eduardo wants to know if we'll take Snydely to Miami tomorrow for a deposition.  He says it includes mileage and expenses."

             
I thought it might be fun to spend a day in Miami.  "Sure, I'll go."

             
"We're in, Eduardo," Willey said.  "When and where?"  Willey wrote down the information and then said.  "We'll call you when we get there tomorrow.  Talk to you then, bye."  Willey put the phone back into his shirt pocket.  "Now we won't have to go forty miles north tomorrow to mail the flash drive.  We can mail it on the way to Miami."  We both looked at Snydely--he didn't look well."

             
"Are you okay, Snydely?" I asked. 

             
"Would you be okay if you were going to testify against Flaherty, and Buckland, and their goons?" he asked.

             
"No," Willey said.  "I guess not.  But Barney and I will be right there with you all the way."  Snydely seemed to look even worse.  I guess he didn't have much faith in us.

****

             
The morning after the party John Flaherty stood in front of his open wall safe.  Where was it?  It had to be there!  He emptied the contents of the safe onto the floor.  The flash drive was gone.  In the wrong hands that flash drive could send him to jail for a long time.

             
Flaherty's stomach grew queasy.  His hands started to tremble.  It couldn't be missing.  He was the only one who knew the combination to the safe.  Not even his wife knew the combination.  Nobody . . . wait, Snydely had possession of the combination when they changed the dial.  Yes, he remembered clearly now.  He remembered Snydely coming into his office and handing him the new combination on a sheet of paper.  Snydely, that bastard!  Snydely was going to turn him over to the feds in return for amnesty.  Flaherty ran to the phone to call Stevens.

****

Chapter Nineteen

WE GOT UP late the next morning due to drinking the night before.  Snydely looked worse than all of us except for Oscar, and he deserved to have a hangover after the way be behaved at Flaherty's party the night before.  We grabbed some coffee and doughnuts for breakfast, milk and a muffin for Oscar, and after that we stopped at a department store.  The weather was too warm to wear jackets, so Willey, Snydely, and I bought cargo shorts with large pockets so we could carry our guns unnoticed.  Then we stopped for a case of twelve ounce bottles of spring water for the long, hot, drive from coast to coast.  We headed south down through the peninsula, through St. Petersburg to Tampa Bay. 

             
The usual afternoon thunder storm was about to break loose as we drove up onto the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.  We looked down to the right to see the remaining length of the original bay bridge that had its middle section removed when the Skyway Bridge was built.  On the opposite side of the Bay there's another length remaining of the old bridge that also juts out into the Bay from the mainland.  The remains of the old bridges are called fishing piers now, with a few shops on them for the tourists.

             
The Bay was the color of lead as the thunder and lightning started.  The rain beat down on the Wrangler's soft top.  We came down on the other side of the bridge and continued south toward Bradenton and Sarasota.  We went across Charlotte Harbor, down through Punta Gorda, Fort Meyers, and Bonita Springs.   Finally we arrived in the beautiful but snobby city of Naples, where it's rumored the inhabitants can spot an interloper simply by the shade of pastels they wear.  Naples appeared to be mile after mile of gated communities.  Finally we reached a business area. 

             
It was nearing five o'clock when we got there and we were all starving.  I parked my ratty, dust covered old Wrangler at a meter between a shiny Mercedes and a glowing Bentley.  We dropped a few quarters into the meter and headed for the Ponce De Leon Pub across the street.  I had the envelope for the Attorney General with me in the paper bag.  I stopped at a mailbox and dropped the envelope into it, straight from then bag, no finger prints.  It was a hot day, but since we had Oscar with us we sat at an outdoor table under an umbrella.  Oscar got a few stares.

             
"We're going to get thrown out of here," Snydely said.  "We should have left the monkey in the car."

             
"We should have left you in the car," I said.

             
"Yeah," Willey added.  "With all the windows rolled up tight."  We looked around, and yes, all the people were wearing pastels.  We weren't.  And Oscar didn't even come close.  They were a dour lot.  It looked like there had been a convention of undertakers in town, and they had forgotten to go home.  Some of them looked like they hadn't smiled since Calvin Coolidge was in office.               

             
One thing I noticed was they didn't look their age.  They had the money and the time to take good care of themselves.  I have a theory about rich people.  My old Auntie told me about this.  She said rich people rub themselves all over with thousand dollar bills, and it keeps them looking young.  You might come down with a case of ringworm from doing that, but ringworm can be cured with a month or so of treatment.  I looked at the people around us a little closer.  I didn't see any signs of ring worm. 

             
A waitress came over with menus.  She was a cute little kid.  Her hair was a dubious shade of red.  She did a double take when she saw Oscar.  "Well lookee here," she said.  "And what's your name little feller?"  I knew immediately she was from out of town. 

             
"His name's Oscar," I said.

             
"Oscar, you're the handsomest man we've had in here all day," she gushed. Oscar gave her his award winning smile.  We all ordered--a salad with no dressing and a bottle of bottled water for Oscar.  The sun was getting low in the sky. 

             
Willey said, "Looks like we're going to cross the Alley in the dark."  Rte. 75 runs from the west coast at Naples, across the Everglades, to the East coast at Miami.  The locals call it Alligator Alley. 

             
Snydely looked concerned.  "What's wrong with crossing it at night?"

             
"Well," Willey said.  "They don't call it Alligator Alley for nothing.  You see, alligators are cold blooded lizards, and at night the Everglades cools down.  Then the gators head for the nearest source of heat--that would be the road.  The sun heats up the road all day long and the road retains its heat at night.  So at night the cars end up running over them. 

             
Now Snydely looked alarmed.  "Can't the people see the alligators on the road?" he asked.

             
Willey said, "Most people think alligators are green, but they're really black.  It's damn hard to see them when they're lying on the road at night."

             
Willey turned to me.  "And you know, Barney, that little Wrangler of yours is top heavy.  It has a narrow wheel base and a high center of gravity.  So if we do hit an alligator we'll probably roll over.  And with that canvas top of yours, we'll get smeared all over the road.

             
"But there's one good thing," Willey added.  "The emergency crew will have an easy time of it, because when they get there with the baskets to pick up the pieces, there won't be any pieces.  The gators will have taken care of that."

             
I looked around for a mirror.  I wanted to see if I looked as green as Snydely.  Willey was grinning from ear to ear.  I had to remember to strangle him when I had the time.

             
We hit Alligator alley just as the sun was setting.  A canal ran alongside the road.  The canals were formed when they dredged up the soil from the swamp to build up the road bed.  The canals made a perfect playground for the alligators.  We caught sight of a few in the fading light--and yes, they were black.  They looked like they were made of rubber.  We drove straight East, no bends in the road, no hills.  Just a sea of saw grass on both sides with a few tree islands, called hammocks, in the distance.  The setting sun turned the saw grass a flaming red.  It was like driving into a postcard.  Soon the postcard sank into darkness, and all we could see was the road ahead.  There was no one behind us and only occasionally did a car pass us from the opposite direction.

             
Shortly after dark the bugs came out.  Not just mosquitoes, but also flying beetles, moths, dragonflies, and other unnamed niceties.  We had to close the windows and depend on the Wrangler's vents to keep us cool.