Brady’s Run
by
Joseph Collum
Jigsaw Press
Sun River, Montana
Brady’s
Run© 2009 by Joseph Collum
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted by any means—including, but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, audio or video—without express written consent by the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Information address: Editor, Jigsaw Press, 784 US Hwy 89, Vaughn, Montana, 59487.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-934340-76-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008939415
Smashwords Edition
Jigsaw Press
Sun River, Montana
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Dedicated to Donna
Chapter One
On a moonless morning so black even the shadows seemed to cast shadows, a tall, sleek figure glided through the inky stillness, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a blue canister in either hand. In the distance, he heard waves lap sleepily onto a beach and palm fronds whispering in the breeze, sounds normally pleasing to him. But his mood was dismal as a swamp.
What the fuck am I doing here?
He slipped through a swinging wooden gate into the courtyard of the Pelican’s Nest Motel, feeling the pitchdark air, bleak and ominous as night-ocean water. The trespasser darted around patches of pink neon light cast by the lazy blinks of a Vacancy sign, ducked beneath a staircase, and stood stock still, waiting for his irises to adjust to the black velvet shadows. The motel was asleep and he felt invisible, his only witness a pair of stars winking overhead, watching down on him like a barn owl from the rafters. For an instant he smelled perfume, then realized it was the thick saccharine scent of jasmine—like flowers rotting in a graveyard. He fought off a momentary nausea. Then the answer hit him.
Money.
Lithe as a cat, the black-clad man bound up the stairs and moved along a rail overlooking a swimming pool and thatched tiki bar. It was October, still the slack season. Fort Lauderdale hadn’t yet been invaded by vacationers seeking spiritual resuscitation from surf, sun, and sand. The motel’s second floor was unoccupied. He put down the containers outside Room 15 and deftly picked the lock, which gave a dull report and the door sighed open. Stepping inside, he pulled the drapes together and flipped on the television for light, revealing a garden variety Florida motel room; light, airy, clean as a new car. He thought of the dingy room he rented, with its Salvation Army décor and reek of disinfectant. Rat’s Nest.
“Now here’s the 4 a.m. update on Hurricane Phyllis.” The television was tuned to the Weather Channel, the sound just loud enough to hear. The intruder turned and listened. “Phyllis is shaping up to be a storm of historic proportions as it bears down on the Yucatan Peninsula. The National Hurricane Center reports that a hurricane hunter aircraft has flown into Phyllis’s four mile wide eye and measured winds of 150 miles per hour. Barometric pressure is a record low 882 milibars, an incredible 100 points below what it was this time yesterday. At this point the storm track is quite wobbly, but all indications are it will hit Cozumel and Cancún within the next twelve hours.”
Poor fucking Mexicans, thought the man in black.
“Computer projections,” the weatherman said, “indicate that after she passes the Yucatan, Phyllis will loop north and east and gain strength as she heads toward South Florida.”
Good for business. He lowered the sound and opened his bag—a physician preparing for surgery. He pulled out a hotplate and set it on a white rattan table. Crumpling newspaper, spreading it around the room, his mind wandered away from Phyllis to the motel’s owners. He’d been watching them surreptitiously for a week. Old bald guy and blonde wife. Little long in the tooth, but firm body. Nice tits. I’d hit her.
He removed a hand auger from the bag and soundlessly bored holes in the baseboards on either side of the room, then threaded plastic tubing through each hole. With little effort, he lifted one of the blue containers, attached the spout to the flanged end of a tube, poured liquid into the adjacent room, and repeated the process on the opposite wall. The remaining fluid he splashed on the beds and walls as casually as if he was watering flowers. He set the second blue canister on the hot plate and switched the burner to high, then opened the drapes and slipped from the room as silent as fog.
Five minutes later, he was sitting in a stolen car half a block away, tense, still as a statue, staring anxiously through the blackness, stony eyes locked on Room 15’s big plate glass window, counting down mutely.
3, 2, 1…
An orange fireball erupted followed by a dull whomp. He held his breath, watching flames climb the walls, black smoke billowing from the white door jamb. The fire quickly spread into the rooms next door. The picture window facing the courtyard burst and, within two minutes, the entire second floor of the Pelican’s Nest was ablaze. Tongues of flame broke through the roof and licked at the black sky, red sparks dancing in the air like a swarm of lightning bugs.
“Fire!” someone shouted.
A man in a robe blew into the courtyard, swift as a gust of wind. The bald motel owner. He began pounding on doors.
“Fire,” he hollered. “Everyone out.”
Guests rushed into the night wearing pajamas and nightgowns, some wrapped in blankets. The motel owner twisted the nozzle of a garden hose and tried to douse the flames, but the water pressure was too feeble to reach the roof. He dropped the hose, grabbed a bucket, and plunged it into the swimming pool, then raced up the staircase, and heaved water at the blaze. He might as well have spit. He ripped off his robe and beat at the fire.
Old codger’s got balls, the arsonist thought, watching from the street, captivated by the drama he’d ignited. He saw a woman dash up the stairs, the blonde wife, her breasts bouncing inside the robe like desperately beating hearts. She reached her husband and wrestled him away from the inferno.
Sirens were soon wailing and flashing lights replaced the darkness. Two red ladder trucks roared up and fire fighters were quickly attacking the flames with high pressure streams of foam retardant. But too late. The building was burning like a tinderbox.
Crackhead would be proud. The arsonist snorted, the stolen car’s engine thrumming smoothly at idle. Crackhead! The pervert would be cranking his shank at a hundred miles an hour right now.
Then the first squad car screeched up to the scene.
Time to go.
Chapter Two
Max Brady knew he was dreaming, but couldn’t tear himself from his foggy netherworld.
A bright perfect morning without a blemish in the blue sky. Padding on foot across the Brooklyn Bridge—happy, content—basking in the memory of her the night before—soft, rapturous, ravenous. Then, with no signal, no warning, no chance to stop time, to alter events, his world exploded. Screaming into his cell phone.
“Get out, Victoria. Get out.”
“Max, it’s too hot.”
“Listen to me.”
“My God!” she cried. “People are jumping.”
“Victoria. Crawl to an exit. Get out now.”
“Max, I love you. Don’t ever forget.”
The phone clicked, leaving nothing but a hiss—a deafening, unbearable, eternal hiss. Brady heard screams and snapped his head up to blue sky filled with red fire, black smoke and falling bodies. He knew in an instant, knowing without thinking, his life had forever changed.
A giant cloud engulfed him and he gasped awake. Drenched in sweat, he was overcome by a profound sense of relief. A dream. Brady rolled over to caress her silky skin, still warm with sleep, and reality stabbed him. She wasn’t there. She hadn’t been there. Not for years. Only the nightmare that permeated his sleep like an endless loop of film.
Brady lay in the dark trying to get his bearings. Where am I? It took several seconds. The boat. He rolled from the bunk and staggered naked onto the deck of the schooner Victoria II. A crescent moon hung in the black western sky like the half-open eye of a sleeping cat. To the east, the first indigo bars of dawn began to purr reveille.
He plunged over the side of the boat, slashing through a layer of mist into chilly blackness, tripping shrill alarms that speared his sensors like ice picks. Brady held his breath for a long moment, suspended in limbo, fiercely trying to retrieve his fast fading apparition. But, as ever, she swam off like a diaphanous white vapor, turning only to whisper, “Don’t ever forget.”
Brady hissed to the surface and gasped for air. Day was fast eclipsing night and, treading water, he watched the silhouette of a sprawling Spanish hacienda emerge against the illumining sky like a latent image materializing in a dark room. Victor Gruber, his friend and owner of the home, wouldn’t be awake for another hour. Max clambered over the transom and stepped onto the dock, his mind still clouded by the dust of his dream. He turned a spigot and a shower nozzle protruding from a piling gushed cold water on his head. A bar of soap sat atop the piling and he lathered himself then rinsed and ducked into the schooner’s cabin. Moments later he came on deck in a pair of ragged khaki shorts, high-topped black sneakers, and white T-shirt with skull-and-crossbones on the back and, printed in black on the front, the words Sea Shanty.
Brady traipsed through the dew-drenched lawn, grass blades lashing his bare ankles like chilly spears, the only sound the chirrup of morning warblers wakening in hidden roosts. An old green Schwinn was leaning against the side of the house. He pushed the bicycle onto Siesta Lane, pedaled to the end, then steered east beneath a catena of royal palms standing like silent sentries.
Max accelerated up the steep arch of the Las Olas Boulevard Bridge with an untroubled titanium sky spreading before him. He glanced right to a small half-moon bay where a dozen sailboats sat at anchor, reaching the crest just as the golden glare of the sun’s aurora broke over a placid sea. A small flotilla of cargo ships floated benignly on the horizon.
Fort Lauderdale Beach was a barrier island bordered by the Atlantic on one side and the Intracoastal Waterway on the other. Brady peered up the Intracoastal at the line of mammoth luxury yachts docked as far as he could see, wondering, as he did every morning: Who the hell owns those things?
Then a jolt of electricity shot up Brady’s spine. A thick plume of black smoke spiraled into the north sky. For an instant he wondered if he was still trapped in his nightmare. A car whizzed by, rattling the drawbridge’s steel grate. He touched the railing and it was cold. Brady decided he was awake.
He raced down the bridge, alarm bells shrieking in his brain, eyes riveted on the dark pillar. At the bottom he tacked left and pumped hard, his dread surging the closer he got. Brady turned the corner at Playa del Sol and his heart sank. The Pelican’s Nest Motel was a smoldering shell.
The street was a helter-skelter of firetrucks and hoses strewn like spaghetti across the asphalt. Dozens of people milled about, many wrapped in blankets, faces painted with numbed expressions, some streaked with tears, like war refugees, dazedly watching firefighters douse what remained of the motel. The red barrel-tile roof was caved in and water percolated from the second floor straight down to the first like a monsoon on a black forest. The straw thatch of the tiki bar was scorched and the swimming pool was rancid as a toxic waste pit.
Brady spotted a white and blue police car. A cop was scribbling in the front seat, a woman sitting next to him. Max pushed his bicycle over, reached through the open passenger-side window, and squeezed Olga Klum’s shoulder. She looked up and a chill stole through him.
Normally a striking woman with a narrow fine-featured face and translucent blue eyes who looked much younger than her 50 years, Olga was now like a film actress transformed by special effects—her eyes red-rimmed and puffy, her face haggard and drawn.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” Max said.
Her eyes flooded with tears.
“Max,” she said, a sob escaping from deep inside. “It was terrible.”
“Its okay, Olga,” he said, caressing her cheek softly.
“What are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”
The policeman in the driver’s seat leaned over and looked up at Brady.
“Excuse me, sir, can you give us a few minutes?” Then a look of recognition crossed his face. “Oh, hi, Mr. Brady.”
Dan Mason was a young officer with a dark tan, close-cropped black hair and thick Popeye forearms. The beach was his beat and Brady had known him for him for a couple of years.
“No problem, Dan,” Max said. “Just checking on my friends. Is Gunther okay?”
The patrolman pointed to an ambulance across the street. The back door was open and a burly bald man lay on a stretcher while a paramedic bandaged his right hand.
“He was burned trying to put out the fire,” Olga said, a trace of German accent in her inflection, tears streaming down her cheeks. “But it was too far gone. Max, it was awful!”
“Olga, I’m going to call Victor,” he said, gently patting her shoulder. “He’ll want you and Gunther to stay with him as long as you need to.”
Olga looked up at Brady, swiping soot-smudged fingers across her wet face. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Brady negotiated the snarl of fire hoses to the ambulance, watching Gunther Klum as he approached, pathos swelling inside him for the big man. Gunther had a grizzly bear’s countenance but, Max knew, the temperament of a teddy bear. The Klums had come to Fort Lauderdale 30 years before from Germany, bought the Pelican’s Nest, and had lived an idyllic life since. Now their business and home was a charred heap of rubble. Grief was etched on Gunther’s ash-caked face, deepening the engravings already carved by age.
“Are you alright, Gunther?” Max said.
It was one of those reflexive questions people ask at times like this, knowing the other person is far from okay. The medic wrapping his hand, Gunther looked at Brady, his bloodshot eyes crinkled and his thin white lips curled into a wan smile.
“If by alright, Max, you mean alive, yes, I’m alright. A few minor burns. Nothing that won’t heal.”
Gunther was 70 years old but, like Olga, looked much younger. He seemed to have aged twenty years overnight.
“Gunther, what the hell happened?” Brady said.
“I don’t know, Max,” he said, his accent thicker than his wife’s. “There was an explosion. When I got to the door, flames were coming from the roof. They spread so fast. Thank God the upper floor wasn’t occupied. I roused everyone, then grabbed the hose and did what I could. The firetrucks were here in five minutes, but…”
Gunther’s voice trailed off, his bleary eyes gazing out at the gloomy black carcass of his ravaged motel.
“What could have caused such an explosion, Gunther?”
“Nothing,” he said, slapping at the sky with the back of his good hand. “There are no gas lines. We didn’t have anything combustible lying around. No paint or gas cans. Nothing volatile that could have caused this.”
Gunther looked at Brady for several seconds, deep in thought. “Max,” he said gravely, “I don’t think this was an accident.”
Chapter Three
“Magnificent tree,” Adonis Rock said, his eyes sweeping the immense green canopy that monopolized the airspace over Jack Del Largo’s front yard.
“Pain in my ass,” Del Largo said. “My wetback gardener smuggled his entire fucking family across the Rio Grande with what I paid him just to blow the leaves.”
The two men had been stamped from vastly disparate molds. Del Largo short, pear-shaped, dark twitchy eyes, mangy thatch of brown hair, fleshy love handles hanging over his belt like saddlebags. Adonis, tall, resplendent, blonde locks cascading onto tawny granite shoulders, showcased in a black tank top T-shirt.
“I can take it out for you,” Rock said, assaying the monster trunk with a swift calculating eye.
“No thanks.”
“I’ll give you a good price.”
“I got enough on my plate,” Del Largo said, waving at Adonis to follow.
“Let me know,” Adonis said, still eyeing the tree.
Del Largo lived in an 80-year-old riverfront mansion on Sailboat Bend—a snug, leafy slice of old Fort Lauderdale. Legend had it Al Capone once wintered in the house. Del Largo had spent a gold mine remodeling the coral-hued abode with its russet tile roof, dramatic Castilian arched windows, and sumptuous pool looking out over New River that fetched oohs and aahs from passing boaters.
Del Largo was reaching for the handle when the front door burst open, nearly knocking Adonis off the stoop into a thorny bed of bougainvillea. A gangly beanpole of a woman whirled out of the house like a cyclone, a Virginia Slim dangling from her lips and shoulder blades protruding like pubescent breasts from the wrong side of her body.
“Jack,” she said, her back to Adonis, “we’ve got to decide on the menu.”
“Jesus, Marla,” Del Largo said, “not now.”
“Maine lobster crepe with a dill hollandaise,” said Marla, ignoring his peevish tone, “or lobster mango canapés on crisp Asian toast?”
“Sounds delicious, Marla.”
“Miniature Beef Wellington or smoked duck confit over endive with mandarin orange?”
“What the hell is confit?”
“Oh, Jack!”
“This goddamned wedding is gonna bankrupt me. I thought the bride’s family is supposed to pay for this shit.”
“For god’s sake, Jack, they live in a trailer.”
“The band alone is costing me twenty grand. I should be getting the Rolling fucking Stones.”
“Jack! Your language!”
Marla spun about and caught sight of Adonis for the first time, her eyes growing as big and round as capital O’s.
“Marla Del Largo,” she said, extending her hand. “And you?”
“Adonis Rock,” he said, not sure whether to shake her hand or kiss it. What the hell. He bowed and gallantly pecked her paw.
“Adonis,” Marla said, her face lighting up like a callow girl being fawned over. “How fitting.”
Jack Del Largo felt like puking. He knew his wife was a sucker for sweet talkers and hand kissers and had succumbed to the charms of more than one Casanova. He’d never confronted her, as she had never challenged him. Ask no questions, I’ll tell no lies was the magic recipe behind the Del Largo’s nuptial bliss. The bottom line for Marla, he knew, was the bottom line. Lucre trumped lust. If she had to choose between a blue-collar caveman like Adonis Rock and a roly-poly plutocrat like himself, she’d opt for the mansion, the Mercedes, and the A-list friends.
“He’s a tree trimmer, Marla,” Jack said.
Her face the picture of sudden disappointment, she said, “Tree trimmer?”
“I prefer arborist,” said Adonis.
“Oh,” Marla said, the spell broken. Then her eyes brightened like 100-watt lightbulbs. “Are you going to cut down that nasty old…what is it anyway? Oak?”
Adonis stared at the Del Largos, trying to camouflage his incredulity. They don’t know.
“I told Jack, er, Mr. Del Largo, I’d give you a good price,” he said.
“Can you get rid of it before the wedding next week?” Marla said.
“No problem. Two day job.”
“Oh, Jack, do it,” she said.
“How much?” said Del Largo, glaring at Adonis like he had a mouthful of mustard.
Rock folded his arms and stroked his chin, surveying the tree with a contemplative air. From taproot to tree top the gargantuan hardwood stood at least one hundred feet tall and its trunk was as thick as a Scud missile. Adonis did some quick arithmetic and felt a tremor in his gut. He’d normally charge five grand to take down an oak and haul away the timber. But this wasn’t oak.
“Three thousand,” he said.
“That’s highway robbery!” Del Largo said.
“Most tree services would charge five,” Adonis said with keen indifference, trying to sound blasé, as though he and greed were strangers.
“Jack!”
“No way, Marla. This wedding’s already costing me sixty grand.”
“Jack!”
“No, Marla! That’s final,” Del Largo said and lumbered toward the door. “Come on, Adonis.”
“Wait, Jack,” Marla said. “What about the first course? Wild mushroom herb ravioli with white truffle sauce or apricot ginger pan-seared sea scallops over seaweed salad?”
“Jesus, Marla!” Del Largo said, waving his hand dismissively. “You decide!”
Jack led Adonis into the house through an antique cedar door with iron grilles and a postigo window and proceeded down a long arched red brick hallway. The floors were polished black marble, and hand-carved Mexican furniture was everywhere; scallop-backed benches, mesquite armoires, and big red Tamalero ceramic pots.
Del Largo’s study overlooked the swimming pool, occupied at the moment by a blonde in a white bikini floating face up on a raft. She had immense breasts that did not appear to be the work of Mother Nature.
“Raymona,” Del Largo said. “My future daughter-in-law. She might be trailer trash, but she’s a first-rate piece of ass.”
“Your son’s a lucky man,” Adonis said.
“Not really. She’s also a five-star cunt. I give them three years.”
“Why pay sixty grand then?”
“Marla’s a cunt too. If I don’t throw a chichi wedding so she can show off for her society friends, it’ll cost me five million in alimony.”
“Romantic,” Adonis said, muzzling a grin.
Del Largo shot him a malevolent look, stepped to the wet bar and splashed bourbon from a crystal decanter into two short glasses. He handed one to Adonis and plopped heavily into a black leather swivel chair behind his desk, then motioned his visitor to the seat facing him.
“Cohiba?” Del Largo said, proffering a foot-long cigar.
“No, thanks.”
Del Largo flicked a butane flame and puffed until the stogie’s tip glowed crimson. Then he unlocked the top drawer of his desk, extracted a thick manila envelope and tossed it to Adonis.
“Twenty-five large in tens and twenties, as agreed,” he said.
Adonis rose to his feet and tucked it into the back of his denim shorts.
“Nice doing business with you, Jack. Let me know if you change your mind on that tree.”
Del Largo calmly expelled a blue smoke ring. “Sit down,” he said. “I got something else.”
Adonis sat back down, a corner of the envelope jabbing him in the back. Del Largo dipped the unlit end of the cigar in his bourbon and drizzled a few drops on his tongue.
“If another motel burns down,” Adonis said, “it’s gonna get hot—no pun intended.”
Del Largo leaned back, palms and forearms turned upward on the wings of his chair, appraising Adonis like a big, flaccid, cigar-smoking swami.
“It’s not a torch job,” he said, chubby fingers flicking off an ash. “What about removal? Gotta problem with that? And I don’t mean trees.”
Adonis watched the fat man exhale another cloud of smoke, then rest his head on the pillow of flesh beneath his chin. He’d met Del Largo a month before through Dantrelle Peppers, his cellmate at Citrus Correctional. Dantrelle was doing five years for armed robbery. It was well known in population that a Fort Lauderdale lawyer named Jack Del Largo had connections at the Parole Board. Dantrelle paid him twenty grand and was sprung two years early. In August, out of the blue, Del Largo called him in Islamorada, where he was working on a fishing boat. They arranged to meet in the gift shop of the Snapper Creek service plaza at the south end of the Florida Turnpike. It was a sweltering day and Jack was slurping his second fresh squeezed orange juice when Dantrelle arrived.
“O.J.?” Del Largo said. “I’m buying.”
“Nah,” said Dantrelle. “Acid reflux. But a cold Yoo-hoo would hit the spot.”
They walked outside and sat at a picnic table in the speckled shade of a shaggy ficus tree. Dantrelle swiped his soiled angler’s shirtsleeve across the wood slats, sending several bird pellets flying.
“Fucking feathered rats,” he said, setting down his Yoo-hoo. “Whadya need, Jack.”
“A favor,” Del Largo said.
“Anything for you, Jack.”
“Know anybody who can burn a building?”
“Donald Rockwell,” Dantrelle said without hesitation. “He learned from the best.”
“Who’s that?”
“Ever hear of Crackhead Corrales?”
“Drug dealer?”
“Arsonist. A legend. Never caught.”
“Why don’t I just hire this Crackhead?”
“He’s in prison.”
“I thought you said he was never caught.”
“Not for arson. Shot some mobster over in Tampa. He’s on Death Row. Donnie was his apprentice. Did eighteen months at Citrus on a coke rap. Last I heard he was out and changed his name to Apollo or something. Trying to make it as a model or some shit. Guy’s cut like a fucking Greek god.”
Del Largo had used his contacts to track down Donald Rockwell, who was going by the name Adonis Rock. The lawyer hired him to torch the Pelican’s Nest. Now he had something else.
“Depends on the money,” Adonis said. “Removal’s a whole ‘nother thing. Cost you a shitload more than a fire.”
“How much?” said Del Largo, blue cigar smoke billowing from his nostrils.
“Fifty.”
“That’s about what I figured.”
“Plus another ten for a long vacation.”
“Now you’re trying to fuck me.”
“Like I said, things’ll get hot.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“Take it or leave it,” Adonis said, standing again.
“Okay, I’ll take it. But sixty’s final,” he said. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
Del Largo scribbled on a piece of paper, handed it to Adonis, and hoisted himself out of the chair.
“Don’t do anything until I give you the green light. If it happens, it’ll be short notice,” Del Largo said, pulling the study door open and away from Marla’s upraised hand.
“Jack! You scared me,” Marla said and held up a menu. “Seared arctic char with pineapple crab salsa or carved porcini encrusted beef filet with mashed Yukon potatoes?”
Del Largo rolled his eyes and turned to Adonis. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Or,” Marla went on, “petite filet mignon atop croutons with lemon butter shrimp…”
Adonis retraced his steps through the hallway arches, turned a corner and collided with the blonde in a white bikini. The centerfold from the pool. Dripping wet. Adonis looked down and saw two prominent damp spots on his black T-shirt, just below the ribcage.
“I’m so sorry,” she said with a molasses twang, turning dewy brown eyes up at him and inhaling sharply, like a swimmer come up for air.
“Don’t apologize,” he said, eyes locked on her heaving bosom.
“And who might you be?”
“I might be a movie star,” he said with a sly grin. “Or I might be a U.S. Senator.”
“Movie star, maybe. U.S. Senator, I don’t think.”
“Adonis Rock,” he said, extending his hand. “Arborist.”
“What in the world is an arborist?”
“Just a guy who trims trees. I was giving Mr. Del Largo an estimate.”
“Raymona,” she said, shaking his hand.
“Very nice to meet you,” he said.
“Well, Adonis Rock,” she drawled, “you can trim my bushes anytime.”
“Trees.”
“Un-huh,” Raymona said, the tip of her tongue languidly tracing the contour of her pink lips.
She brushed past him and strutted down the hallway, reaching back to tug the white drawstring, liberating her bikini top as she vanished through a doorway.
Adonis shook his head. Three years may be a stretch!
Chapter Four
Max Brady wheeled south on the beach road, letting the salt air wash away the stench of Gunther and Olga Klum’s cindered dreams. Summer’s sultry sauna season was over and the October air had a zesty bite. One of those sunny, serene days that felt good to be alive, if you let it.
Wavelets spooled onto the sand like tongues of liquid gold. A pod of dolphins bobbed languidly just off the beach. A pelican tilted low over them, then soared high and nose-dived into the sea, emerging seconds later with a breakfast fish thrashing in its bill.
Brady marveled at the metamorphosis Fort Lauderdale had undergone since he was a kid. Back then it was the Spring Break mecca, overrun by a locust-horde of college kids oozing hormones and Coppertone. An orgy of wet T-shirt contests, pillaged hotels, beer brawls, and cops carting rowdy students off to jail. Come for vacation, leave on probation! was the town’s unofficial motto. Perfect place for a boy going through puberty.
After Brady went away to college—not to return for more than twenty years—the city’s ruling class abolished the beach party and went upscale. Students were evicted and wrecking balls razed the seedy dives along A-1-A. A concrete canyon of condos and luxury hotels had risen in their footprints.
Max counted a dozen gantry cranes sprouting in the sky along the ocean like giant preying mantis. In an hour the air would be filled with dust and the rat-tat-tat of jackhammers.
For now, though, the beach was a placid paradise. Vendors setting out lounge chairs and jet skis beneath a throng of spindly coconut trees, their green fronds clapping in the timorous breeze like long slim fingers.
Brady steered along a low white wall curling the length of the beach, past sun bathers, water gazers, brown-skinned joggers, and rollerbladers with I-Pods plugged like stethoscopes in their ears. In the distance he could see the downtown skyscrapers jutting up like a cardboard movie set. Brady braked in front of Sunny’s and leaned the Schwinn against a palm tree.
A smiling young woman with long golden hair stood on the sidewalk, serving tray in hand, her flawless figure on full display in a red thong bikini, red western boots, and red cowboy hat.
“What’s the story, mornin’ glory,” Sunny Regan said.
“Just trying to break even, Sunshine,” Brady said, taking a seat at an umbrella table a few feet from a young mother and father with two squirming little boys.
Sunny was the siren of Lauderdale Beach, a phosphorescent personality whose tiny bistro raked in a small fortune serving omelets and turkey wraps to tourists. But the main attraction was Sunny. Tourists paid five bucks to take pictures with her in her distinctive outfit, standing before the sign on the red canopy over her door: “Sunny’s —Tastes great and its goooood fer ya!”
“The usual?” Sunny said.
“I’m feeling kinda untamed today,” said Brady. “Make my toast rye instead of wheat.”
“Max Brady, you are too wild,” she said, scribbling his order, stopping twice to adjust the strap of her scant top. Walking inside, she looked back at him over her shoulder, forcing Max to keep his eyes on hers.
Two tables down, an elderly man was reading the Miami Herald, his brown skin cracked like old leather, long withered neck protruding from his shoulders like a tortoise from its shell.
“Morning, Max,” he said without raising his eyes. “Don’t enjoy my company anymore?”
“Morning, Jonas,” Brady said. “Didn’t want to disturb you’re reading.”
“Nonsense,” said Jonas, clearing a spot in the shade. “Come sit.”
Brady moved to Jonas Bigelow’s table as Sunny emerged through double French doors beneath the red canopy with a steaming cup of coffee. Max saw lust flare in the old man’s milky blue eyes, then fizzle like a spent roman candle.
“Now, Jonas,” Sunny said, wagging her left fore finger at him, “don’t start ranting at Max. He wants to enjoy the beautiful day and eat his breakfast without you harping about politics.”
Brady looked at Sunny and they both shrugged and laughed. Silencing Jonas, they knew, was like trying to muzzle the sea. Max held up his cup and pointed at it.
“Best java on the beach,” he said.
“Can’t beat it with a stick,” Sunny said.
Without looking back this time, she sashayed through the French doors and past three high-top tables littered with morning newspapers, both men eyeballing her every step until she’d disappeared behind the swinging kitchen door.
“Finest fanny on the beach,” Jonas said, his eyes twinkling.
“Jonas, I’m shocked. Seventy-five years old. What would Betty do if she heard you?”
“I wouldn’t live to see seventy-six,” Jonas said, and they laughed.
But the good humor was fleeting. Max noticed Jonas’s jaws clench, then heard the sound. Heard it before he saw it, the roar announcing the arrival two blocks ahead of the day’s first giant cement truck thundering down the beach road, spewing a foul trail of acrid gray fumes in its wake.
“God damn them,” Jonas said. “Greedy bastards! All they see are dollar signs.”
Bigelow and his wife Betty owned the Coral Reef, one of a colony of mom-and-pop motels clustered in the central beach area. Jonas and a band of innkeepers and activists were fighting tooth-and-nail to stop the incursion of immense high-rises dwar fing their properties.
“They’re destroying the beach, Max,” said Jonas. “The breezy character is vanishing. They’re turning us into a Vegas Strip on the ocean.”
Brady nodded wordlessly, his rote response to Jonas’s tirades.
“I know you don’t want to get involved, Max,” Jonas said, his voice rising, “but we need a good lawyer.”
“Ex-lawyer,” Brady said. “Besides, Jonas, I’ve got enough problems of my own. I wouldn’t know what to do with yours.”
Jonas waved a hand at Max disgustedly. “Talking to you is like banging my head on the wall.”
“Don’t knock it. Head banging burns two hundred calories an hour.”
“It’s not funny, Max. You grew up on this beach. You know they’re destroying it. You should be up in arms more than any of us. If we don’t stop them, those buildings are gonna be around longer than dinosaur turds.”
“Times change, Jonas. The world changes. Buildings go up. Buildings come down,” Brady said, thinking, yes, buildings do come down.
“That’s a bunch of applesauce, Max.”
Brady studied the cantankerous old man for a long moment. Jonas was like a crazy uncle at Christmas dinner—prone to rant and rave—but Max was as fond of the curmudgeon and his wife as he was of Gunther and Olga.
“Jonas,” he said, “something terrible has happened.”
“What?” Bigelow said, an anxious look on his wrinkled face. “Did someone die?”
“Not that bad. But the Pelican’s Nest burned down this morning.”
“Oh, God, no!” Jonas said. “How are Olga or Gunther?”
Brady filled him in on the fire, Gunther’s burns, and that Olga and the Pelican Nest’s guests were unharmed.
“Damage?”
“Total.”
“Goddamnit,” he blurted. “What happened?”
“Don’t know. But Gunther doesn’t think it was an accident.”
“Arson?”
“I haven’t spoken to the fire marshal yet, but it could be.”
“Damn them,” Jonas said.
“Them? Them who?”
“Max, I know you think I’m a conspiracy nut, but I don’t believe in coincidences. The city’s handing out building permits for those monstrosities on silver platters. At the same time they try to squeeze us out. Jacking up our taxes. Crushing us with fines. Doing everything they can to run us off. Now they’re burning us out.”
Sunny came out with Max’s breakfast in time to catch the tail end of the conversation.
“Fire?” she said, setting the plate in front of Brady. “Where?”
“The Pelican’s Nest,” Jonas said.
“No!” she said, clapping a hand to her mouth. “What about Olga and Gunther?”
“They’re fine,” Max said and repeated what he’d told Jonas.
“Those poor people,” Sunny said, tears welling in her eyes.
“They were burned out,” Jonas said.
“Jonas, you’re jumping to conclusions,” Max said.
“Really, my friend? Let me tell you something. Greed and corruption are as much forces of nature as gravity. These bastards will stoop to anything to get rid of us.”
Tears were streaming down Sunny’s cheeks. The beach community was a close knit group. Most of the small motel, restaurant, and shop owners knew each other and many were morning regulars at her sidewalk cafe.
“I’ll put plates together for the Klums,” Sunny said. “Jonas, can you drop them off on your way home?”
“Absolutely, dear. That’s very thoughtful.”
Sunny whisked back inside, a sense of purpose in her step, neither man watching her this time.
“Jonas,” Brady said, considering the old man closely, “do you seriously believe the fire is part of some plot?”
“Max, this beach isn’t all sunshine and bliss. The politicians and developers are in cahoots. We’re like little Davids fighting Goliath.”
Bigelow threw his newspaper on the table, jumped to his feet, and strode defiantly to his bicycle. At seventy-five, his step was as peppy as a vigorous man half his age.
“Those sonsabitches aren’t gettin’ away with this,” he said.
Sunny came out and put a bag of food in Jonas’s bike basket and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“Give ‘em hell, Jonas,” Brady said, smiling as Bigelow rode off down the beach.
“Goddamned right I will,” he shouted back. “Those bastards are gonna wish they’d never heard of Jonas Bigelow.”
Chapter Five
Brady finished breakfast, left Sunny a handsome tip, and pushed his bike a half block to the Sea Shanty, a no frills beach bar for people with sand between their toes. The sign on the door said it all: No shoes, no shirts, no problem! The Shanty had an L-shaped teak bar, a dozen wooden stools, and six small tables. The walls were adorned with pirate flags, ship lanterns, a 16th Century Seminole dugout canoe, and Max’s old Dewey Weber surfboard.
There were photographs of his late parents, John and Mary Brady; Duke Kahanamoku, the legendary father of surfing; and an old black man with a black-and-white monkey perched on his shoulder.
On the outside wall facing the beach was a small courtyard enclosed on three sides, with a coral waterfall, several palms, a big twisty banyan tree and a beach sand floor where patrons could dig their feet in, sip beer in the shade, and watch the waves roll in across the street.
Brady switched on one of three televisions hanging from the walls and clicked to the Weather Channel, listening while he checked his ice bins and emptied the dishwasher.
“We have the 10 a.m. National Weather Service bulletin on Hurricane Phyllis,” said an attractive blonde female meteorologist standing in front of a satellite map of the Caribbean. “The center of the storm was located near Latitude 18.1 North, Longitude 84.7 West, or about 215 miles southeast of Cozumel. Maximum sustained winds remain near 150 miles per hour, making Phyllis an extremely powerful Category Four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. After passing the Yucatan and making an expected turn north toward Cuba and southern Florida she is likely to gain intensity.”
Another storm, Brady thought. Just what we need.
Max spent the next hour preparing the day’s fare. Cuisine was strictly pub grub: boiled shrimp, shucked oysters, chicken wings, and the house specialty—gumbo. He made a fresh batch daily, dicing fish, chicken, shrimp, sausage, okra into a giant pot with garlic, Cajun seasonings, crushed tomatoes and the proper amount of chicken bouillon that he covered and set to simmer over a low flame on the gas stove.
Then he slipped on a pair of size thirteen New Balances and set off on his bikini run. It was based on the carrot-and-stick theory. By following the trail of sandy-bottomed girls lazing on the beach, Brady could finish his daily six-mile jaunt with relative ease.
The sun vibrated overhead as he jogged down A-1-A, sniffing an olfactory stew of sunscreen, salt water, and deep-fry clams boiling in oil at Beachcombers Grill. Further down, construction sites were in full swing, lunchpail Lothario’s in hard hats, scaling scaffolds, pouring concrete, and directing a steady stream of wolf whistles at girls on the beach.
Brady turned left at Playa del Sol and trotted to the smoldering remains of the Pelican’s Nest. The place looked like carnage from a military attack. Only one firetruck remained. Three firefighters sifted through debris while another wielding a hose drowned the remaining smoky spots. Black water dripped from blistered coal-colored beams that once supported the roof, falling like sluggish tears onto the twisted ruins of the first floor, seeping from the rubble into the grim morass that had been a swimming pool.
A few onlookers gawked from across the street, but the Klums were gone. Max had called Victor Gruber who, as he expected, insisted Gunther and Olga come to stay with him. Victor’s manservant, Charles, had apparently fetched them in the Bentley.
“Busy morning?” Brady said to a tall man with a grimy face.
Captain John McCarty, a Fort Lauderdale fire investigator, turned and grinned. Brady had known him since he opened the Shanty. At the time, McCarty was head honcho at the beach fire station. He had honest brown eyes and a boyish face betrayed only by a sprinkle of pewter that dappled the brown hair scaling his temples like harbingers of middle-age. McCarty wore knee-high yellow rubber boots, latex gloves, and held three silver paint cans.
“I heard you were here earlier, Max,” he said. “I didn’t see you.”
“Didn’t want to get in the way, John. I was more concerned about the Klums.”
“Damned shame.”
“Whatcha got?” Brady asked.
McCarty held up the silver cans. “Collecting samples,” he said. “Bedding, plaster, pieces of furniture.”
“Figured out what triggered this thing yet?”
“The run-off water has a rainbow sheen,” McCarty said, setting the cans in the back of a red Fire Investigation Unit van. “That usually indicates the presence of an accelerant, probably a petroleum distillate.”
“Such as?”
“Could be mineral spirits or turpentine, but my bet is gasoline. One cup of 90 octane properly packaged can be as explosive as four sticks of dynamite.”
“Any idea how this was packaged?”
“Answer’s up there in the ashes,” McCarty said, pointing to one of the fire-gutted rooms on the second floor. “At the source I found pieces of melted blue plastic. Seems to be from some sort of canister. Gave it the sniff test. Smells like it might have been a fuel container. Costco and Home Depot sell them by the thousands.”
“Arson?” Brady said, palming beads of sweat off his forehead.
“We found a charred hotplate in the same room. It might have been used to ignite the accelerant. I won’t know for sure until we run this stuff through a gas chromatograph flame ionization detector.”
“Ouch,” Brady said. “You’re hurting my brain.”
“Sorry, Max,” the fire investigator said with a tired grin. “We’re gonna do some tests.”
“Seems like of a crude way to start a fire.”
“Crude, but effective. When the accelerant explodes, flames spray in every direction. By the time our trucks got here the place was burning faster than my ex-wife’s cooking. Beyond gone.”
“Any suspects?”
Brady expected to hear McCarty say, “too early to tell,” but the investigator hesitated. The look in his eyes made Max wonder if he already had a perpetrator in mind.
“Arson’s tough,” McCarty said, a slight smile cracking his sooty face. “Countrywide, we get a half-million a year. Less than one-fifth of them result in arrest.”
“Good non-answer answer,” Brady said, but didn’t press further. Some secrets, he knew from experience, were best left untold until the time was ripe.
McCarty slammed the van doors closed. “The guests look clean. Mostly tourists here for a week in the sun. Your friends the Klums don’t seem suspicious either.”
“I can vouch for them, John.”
“Owners are always the prime suspects in arsons,” he said. “But I interviewed them. They seem genuinely distraught. No signs of deception. They said the place was turning a healthy profit. And they appear to be financially comfortable.”
“They’re good people,” Brady said.
“Motel wasn’t for sale. No new insurance policies. No apparent motives.”
“Firebug?”
“Pyromaniac’s burn out of obsession. Often sexual. This looks like a pro.”
“Why would a professional arsonist torch a mom-and-pop motel like this?”
“That, my friend, is the million dollar mystery,” said McCarty.
“Probably more like two or three million,” Brady said.
“You tell me. You’re the cop.”
“Ex-cop.”
“Well, give me a call if you think of anything.”
“Likewise. Drop by the Shanty for a beer.”
“Better yet, a beer and bowl of gumbo.”
“You’re on.”
Chapter Six
Jack Del Largo waddled up the gangplank and onto the deck, stopping to catch his breath and wipe driblets of sweat from his florid brow. He scanned the yacht, thinking: Someday I’m going to have a boat like this. His dream was to sail to a tropical island, live on fruit and fish until he was skinny, and nuzzle a native girl under a coconut tree.
Like Van Gogh or Monet or one of those French fucks. Marla was not part of his fantasy.
“Welcome aboard the Shangri-La, Mr. Del Largo,” said a velvety and slightly breathless voice.
Del Largo looked up and gulped for air again, his extra chins jiggling like rooster wattle. Tiffani Bandeaux had that effect on men. Bandeaux was almost six feet tall, with jade eyes, a ravishing physique, and satiny auburn hair that reached her buttocks. She reminded Del Largo of a thoroughbred racehorse raring to run. Scratch the native girl, he thought. I’ll take Tiffani.
“Tiffani, my dear,” he said, patting a hanky over his forehead, his eyes feasting on her, “you are a walking aphrodisiac. I would love to take you on a Caribbean cruise.”
Del Largo leaned over to kiss her hand as gallantly as a 300-pound man could.
“Would your wife be with us?” Tiffani said in a confidential tone laced with an inflection of possibility.
“Oh, no, dear,” said Del Largo, hopeful. “It would be just us.”
“Won’t she mind?”
“Who’s gonna care a hundred years from now?”
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Steele forbids us from consorting with business associates.”
“Mr. Steele need not know.”
“He knows everything,” Tiffani said.
Del Largo suppressed a grin, thinking, if that preening cocksucker knew everything, he wouldn’t need me.
“In fact, Mr. Steele knows you’re here,” Tiffani said. Del Largo looked at her, wondering if she was reading his mind. “He’s in the main salon. Would you like a drink?”
“Do fish like water? Chopin on the rocks.”
It was not yet noon, but Del Largo’s appetite for spirits was ravenous and, no matter the hour, he could soak up vodka like a dry sponge. Tiffani moved down the companionway with the grace of a Spanish dancer, Jack following, his belly quivering like a vat of orange marmalade, eyes fastened on her perfect teardrop derriere encased in snug white slacks, realizing, with another sharp intake of breath, she wasn’t wearing panties.
Bandeaux and the Shangri-La were a perfect match. Both had majestic lines and symmetry. The yacht was a gleaming 223-foot three-decker, navy blue hull, scads of teak and brass, five staterooms, formal dining room, theater, discothèque, gym, Jacuzzi, two jet skis, a 20foot Chaparral dinghy with twin 200-horse Mercury engines, and a Bell 427 helicopter on deck.
Sherwood Steele was stretched out on a buff leather chaise lounge. He was as long and lean as Del Largo was short and fat, with a deep oily tan and a tongue of bottle-black hair lacquered into a “V” over his forehead. But his most striking feature was a pair of barren black eyes that reminded Del Largo of a shark.
“Jack, come in. Sit down,” Steele said in a gravelly voice, without getting up. Tiffani handed him a bottle of vitamin water and, to Del Largo, a tumbler of vodka.
“Will there be anything more, Sherwood?” she asked.
“Tell Hendricks to have the bird ready in 30 minutes.”
Prick’s got more flunkies than Trump’s had girlfriends, Del Largo thought, smiling to himself, knowing Steele conducted business like he’d read the instructions on a Donald Trump Cereal box. Trump’s brand was Trump. Steele’s was Shangri-La. It was on everything he owned. I wonder if he’s got it tattooed on Tiffani’s ass. Del Largo’s breath quickened at the notion of Bandeaux’s naked white bottom.
Steele turned to him, his white teeth flashing a mirthless smile. “How we doing?” he said.
“Making headway,” Del Largo said, savoring his day’s first mouthful of firewater.
“I don’t want to hear headway.” Steele’s black shark eyes bored into Del Largo. “I want to hear mission accomplished.”
“We’re going as fast as we can, Sherwood. I don’t want to raise red flags. We’ve got some holdouts.”
“What’s this holdout shit? Isn’t that why we’re paying our friends a fucking fortune?”
“Well, Sherwood, our friends aren’t earning their money.”
“Whadya mean, ya fat fuck!” Steele said, glaring at the lawyer.
Del Largo felt his ears burn, hoping they weren’t turning scarlet, feeling the cruel eyes on him, demanding to be met. He averted his gaze to the ice cubes melting in his glass.
“Look at me!” Steele snapped, jumping to his feet, jaw muscles bulging like rubber balls.
Del Largo, powerless to resist, turned his head feebly up at Steele’s unctuous face, feeling like a fat kid again being humiliated by the playground bully. Steele, he knew, was a tyrant by nature, but kept tight rein on his Pavlovian instincts, rarely raising his voice, preferring to administer his malice with cool calculation. Osama Bin Laden showed more emotion on his videotapes.
“You’re supposed to be the best-connected lawyer in Fort Lauderdale,” Steele said, sneering down at him. “Don’t I pay you a lotta fucking money?”
“Sure, Sherwood, sure you do,” Del Largo said, squirming, the chair groaning beneath him. “And I work hard for you. You know I do.”
“I know results. And I’m not getting them. Everything’s riding on this. If it doesn’t happen soon, I go down hard. And you go with me. And so do our friends.”
“Don’t worry, Sherwood. We’re gonna get it done. It’s gonna be okay.”
“Follow me,” Steele ordered and abruptly exited the salon.
Del Largo labored to his feet and plodded after Steele down a passageway carpeted by a llama skin rug shaggy enough to hide a Shih Tzu. The guy’s ice, Del Largo thought. Leveraged to his ears and living like the Sultan of Burundi, or Brunei, or wherever the fuck that guy’s from.
They entered a cabin at the center of which sat a large scale model of Fort Lauderdale Beach. Shangri-La Resort was inscribed in gold over an ersatz blue Atlantic bordered by white beach. Every hotel and motel between the ocean and Intracoastal was represented. A black band surrounded a four-block tract like a cummerbund. Yellow patches covered three-quarters of the parcels inside it and red squares overlaid the rest.
“Don’t you understand what I’m trying to accomplish, Jack?” Steele said, an incandescent glow in his black eyes as they pored over the model.
“Sure I do, Sherwood.”
“This will be the most opulent resort in Florida. And the biggest. It’s like I’m building a goddamned mountain. I can’t afford barriers. I can’t afford delays. I need these red parcels to turn yellow by yesterday.”
Del Largo pointed to a red square on Playa del Sol. “This’ll be yellow soon, Sherwood.”
“The smoke?” Steele said. “What makes you think so?”
“No brainer. They’ll collect a boatload of insurance. Our friends can throw roadblocks at them to delay reconstruction two years, maybe three. They’d be crazy not to sell.”
“Get it done,” Steele said.
“This is the domino we’ve been waiting to fall, Sherwood,” Del Largo said, trying to keep eye contact with Steele’s predatory glower. “With them gone the others will cave.”
“They better,” Steele said and smiled. Del Largo felt his blood curdle. The smile was treacherous as a diamondback’s rattle and, Jack knew, whenever he bared it he was coiled to strike. “Who’s next?”
Chapter Seven
The day was perfect for Max Brady’s bikini run. Puffy white clouds sailed across a bluebonnet sky. A cool breeze blew off the ocean like a refreshing tonic. And the sand was dotted with plenty enough flat-belly girls to get him to one end of the beach and back.
Brady hit the Elbo Room at Las Olas and sprinted the last block. Breathing hard, he shucked shoes and T-shirt and waded into the tepid sapphire surf, laving the sweat from his body, then diving headlong and swimming with a powerful stroke, not stopping until he reached the basketball courts across from Bahia Mar Marina a half-mile down the beach. He floated for long minutes in knee deep water, letting the waves wash over him like children’s laughter.
Sandpipers skittered along water’s edge, leaving tiny hieroglyphs in wet sand, oblivious to Max stumbling from the ocean. Brady doodled back down the beach, skipping stones and catching up on his people watching.
Two little girls tossing crackers to a flock of seagulls chittering in midair. A group of Latino men strumming guitars, drinking cerveza, and grilling pork under a coconut tree, their women lazing in the shallows, vigilant eyes on a gaggle of naked toddlers chasing each other ecstatically in the sand.
A small plane caracoled overhead towing a banner ballyhooing “Ladies Night” at a local club. Max crossed the beach to a sidewalk shower and rinsed the salt from his skin, then flopped across the street on bare wet clown-sized feet, walked a half-block and ducked into a doorway. He sprang up three flights of stairs to the Papillon Gym on the roof of the same building that housed the Sea Shanty.
“Getting a little gut, Brady?” said Rose Becker, the gym’s proprietress.
Rose was quite an eyeful. Wholesome as an apple, she had long pitch-black hair, eyes blue as the Gulfstream, and the shapely, athletic physique of a fitness maven.
“Gut?” Max protested, assuming a body-builder’s pose and pulling up his shirt to expose his bare belly. “Six three, one-eighty, abs of steel.”
“More like abs of butter,” she said with an impish gleam.
“Butter?” said Brady, wounded. “They’re at least hard as toast!”
“You better hit the iron, buddy.”
Rose was something of a local heroine. To some, Joan of Arc reincarnate. Anointed leader of SOB—or Save Our Beach—a resistance group fighting developers and politicians bent on plundering the oceanfront. Jonas Bigelow and Gunther Klum had persuaded her to run for mayor of Fort Lauderdale. Her odds of winning were somewhere between nada and nil, but she was campaigning hard. Despite a lissome figure—plainly apparent in her spandex shorts and butterfly T-shirt—Rose was no fragile flower. She had a clear-eyed steadiness about her that Brady was drawn to.
“You plan to wear that out fit at City Hall?” he said.
“Why not? I certainly won’t be giving up the gym after my election.”
“Good. Then I won’t have far to walk to complain.”
“Brady, you’ve got to earn the right to complain,” she said, hands on hips, not smiling. “You just stand back and let it all be.”
“Springsteen. Jungleland. Right?”
“Yeah, right,” Rose said and walked off to tend to a lumpy older woman who looked like she’d never been inside a gym before.
Brady went through his usual rigorous thirty-minute routine of curls, presses, and belly crunches. With his daily run and swim, it was enough to keep him in decent enough shape for a 42-year-old, despite Rose’s mockery. He was on his way out the door when Rose was finishing with the old lady, who looked like she’d just spent a half-hour on the torture rack.
“Are you related to a guy named Torquemada?” Brady said to Rose. “If you happen to lose the election, I hear Guantanamo’s looking for a new Grand Inquisitor.”
“Very funny,” she said with a tart smile.
“See you later, Rosie.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise,” Max said, then noticed a cloud pass across Rose’s face.
“Brady, what happened to the Pelican’s Nest?”
In addition to being card-carrying members of SOB, Olga and Gunther Klum were regulars at the Papillon Gym. Brady told her what happened and that it looked like arson.
“Why would anyone hurt those sweet people?” she said.
“The fire investigator doesn’t think it was intended to harm them physically. But why someone wanted to destroy the motel, I have no clue. John McCarty’s a good man. He’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Rose was standing at the door of a large greenhouse she’d had built on the rooftop overlooking the ocean. Even though she was a physical trainer, her degree was in zoology, with a specialty in lepidoptery—butterflies.
Hence, the Papillon Gym. Rose maintained the butterfly was the perfect symbol for a health club, a place people came to transform, like caterpillars that mutate into exquisite winged creatures.
“Want to see something special?” she said.
“I’ve really gotta go…”
“Follow me,” Rose said, ignoring his balkiness.
Brady dutifully obeyed and trailed her into the greenhouse. It was another world, a lush, verdant magic garden bursting with all manner of orchid, hibiscus, and bougainvillea representing every stripe in the rainbow. The air was redolent with exotic perfume and Max inhaled deeply while hundreds of butterflies danced about, chasing one another blithely from blossom to blossom, reminding Brady of the giggling children he’d just watched on the beach.
“The orange and black ones with white spots on their wings are Monarchs,” Rose said, pointing to two butterflies fluttering among a cluster of honeysuckle. “The yellow and blacks are Tiger Swallowtails. Then there’s the Zebra Swallowtails, the black and white ones.”
“What do you feed them?” said Brady, who knew nothing about butterflies except they were pretty and harmless.
“They suck nectar from the flowers through a proboscis that winds in and out like a garden hose.”
“That’s gotta be tasty.”
“Butterflies taste with their feet.”
“How the heck do they do that?”
“Don’t worry about it, Brady. Just take a look at my newest specimen.”
Rose picked up an enormous creature with broad brown wings and white markings, a cream-colored body, and a red tuft on its throat as dense as fur.
“Wow!” Brady said. “I didn’t know you were raising condors.”
“It’s a Queen Alexandra Birdwing, the world’s largest butterfly. Most Lepidoptera have wingspans of three-to-five inches. The Queen Alexandra is more than twelve inches across,” Rose said, holding it gently as a newborn baby. “I had a dozen shipped here from New Guinea.”