Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course, page 25
part #2 of Truman Kicklighter Series
Truman zipped through the red light, too. When he was two car lengths back from the Monte Carlo, he backed off the accelerator. If Jackie was still alive, he didn’t want to spook Tripp. There was one other way to get to Weedon Island that Truman knew of. If the road was still there. It had been a long time.
Tripp made a sharp right onto Gandy Boulevard and Truman did the same. Now Tripp could do one of two things—turn right onto Sam Martin and the back way across Riviera Bay to Weedon, or keep going a few blocks east if he were headed to meet Bondurant at the Flora-Bama Motor Court.
The Monte Carlo didn’t slow as it passed the turnoff for Sam Martin. One, two, three, four blocks, then it veered left across traffic and into the parking lot of the Flora-Bama Motor Court. Truman passed the motel at a sedate speed, wishing that Eddie’s customized $40,000 tow truck wasn’t quite so conspicuous.
The Flora-Bama had been built in 1950 and the red neon VACANCY sign had been flashing since the end of the Nixon administration. There were three cars parked out front, but only one was a gray Lincoln, air-conditioning running but failing to cool Ronnie Bondurant’s temper.
Billy Tripp pulled up beside the Lincoln. The electric window slid open. “What the fuck took so long?” Ronnie demanded. “Boone isn’t going to hang around all night. Did you take care of the girl?”
“Boone’s still selling ribs off the back of that truck,” Billy said. “I checked. After I dumped the girl back in those mangroves. ‘Gators love mangroves. And dark meat.”
“You sure she’s dead? The last girl you were supposed to take care of is probably in Vegas by now.”
Billy sniggered. “I cut her throat. Ear to ear. She’s dead. Hey. Where’s Wormy?”
“How the fuck should I know? Probably zoned out of his skull somewhere. Forget him.”
Ronnie got out of the Lincoln and locked it up. “We’ll take the Monte Carlo. Boone knows my car.”
“Right,” Billy said loudly, doing that freaky head-bobbing thing with his head. “Right, Ronnie. We’ll take the Monte Carlo. Good idea.”
The Save-Inn was right next door to the Flora- Bama Motor Court and more modern by thirty years. Its mildewing yellow-adobe facade and cracked red-tile roof weren’t what filled up the parking lot on Friday nights. That would be the Save-Inn Lounge. Most of the vehicles were pickups. Truman parked the tow truck in a row of Chevys and Fords. He saw Bondurant climb into the Monte Carlo.
Truman eyed the other trucks. If Weingarten’s men really were “on top of the situation,” were some of them hiding in these trucks? Why didn’t they move in on Bondurant and Tripp right now? Before Jackie got hurt. Unless they planned to wait and catch them in the act of robbing Boone. Television news crews loved that kind of live-action stuff. And if innocent civilians got caught up in the crossfire, they could score even bigger ratings points.
After the Monte Carlo passed, Truman followed. All the Chevys and Fords stayed right where they were.
It was getting close to eleven o’clock. Hernando Boone was in a murderous mood. All night he’d been dickering with these people. What did he have to show for it? Maybe $15,000 in cash, rolled up in the pocket of his baggy silk warm-up pants. Now there were four women left, huddled up over there between their cars, trying to make up their minds about whether they wanted to pool their money and buy the last ten cases of ribs for a stinking hundred bucks. It was almost as bad as giving it away, but Boone didn’t care.
“Okay,” he yelled at the stragglers. “Closing time. You want the meat or not? Let’s go, folks.”
The frizzle-haired white lady was appointed to be the payee. “All right,” she said. “We’ll buy it.”
Boone held out his hand for the money and she started counting out the bills. “One dollar. Two dollars. Three dollars—”
“What’s this shit?” Boone roared. “No way. I don’t want no hundred singles. This ain’t bingo night, lady. Nothing smaller than a twenty. And hurry up.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, and she shuffled off to consult with the others.
Boone walked up the ramp to start moving the packing cases toward the back of the trailer. He turned. “Cash and carry,” he yelled at the women. “That means you gotta carry it off the truck. Or no sale.”
A new car pulled up fifty yards from the trailer, its headlights extinguished. The driver honked the horn twice. Boone stuck his head out of the trailer. “I’m closed,” he hollered, and he went back inside.
Beep. Beep.
“I’m closed, asshole. You’re too late.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Boone had been wanting to shoot somebody. Now he would. He came out of the trailer and started down the ramp, semiautomatic drawn.
Tripp reached for his own gun.
Ronnie Bondurant knocked his hand away. “Wait. Let him come closer. The stupid fucker still thinks we want to buy meat”
“He’ll shoot us, Ronnie,” Billy whined.
“Give him the horn again,” Ronnie ordered.
Beep.
Boone couldn’t believe this fool. He kept walking, gun pointed right at the car. What was it, a Monte Carlo, something like that? The driver had long hair. A woman. With a man beside her.
“One more step,” Ronnie said slowly. “Then hit him with the brights. Then you shoot.”
“Okay, Ronnie,” Billy repeated. “Boone takes one more step. Then we hit the brights and we kill him.”
“What are you, a fucking parrot?” Ronnie snarled.
Truman had been driving without lights since the turnoff at Weedon Drive. He was running slow and staying back. At the marker for the Boy Scout camp, he pulled off the road, backed in a dozen yards or so, and left the truck with the motor running.
He stayed off the paved road, struggling to jog along the soft, sandy shoulder. Every step reminded him of his age and the night’s events.
When he could see the lights of the construction site ahead, Truman swung wide to the right. It was slower going dodging around the heavy equipment and the stacks of materials, but this way there was less of a chance that he would be seen.
Now he could see a big white tractor-trailer rig, with green lettering on the side. A Publix truck out here? Somebody was honking a car horn. Two cars he’d never seen before were parked on the road. Fifty yards away, he saw the now familiar outline of the Monte Carlo.
Hernando Boone was yelling and walking straight toward the Monte Carlo, and he had a semi-automatic pistol aimed right at the car’s windshield. Tripp, behind the wheel, kept honking his horn.
Truman’s only plan was to keep anybody from shooting in or at the Monte Carlo. Jackie could be in the backseat, or even the trunk. He began running toward the Monte Carlo, Eddie’s bulky .38 clutched tightly in his hand.
Suddenly, two shafts of blinding white lights snapped on and were crisscrossing the trailer, Boone, and the Monte Carlo. Four middle-aged women he hadn’t noticed before were pulling short-barreled shotguns out of their phony Fendi handbags and now they were leaned across the hoods of their cars. One of the women, frizzy-haired, had a megaphone, too.
“This is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,” her voiced boomed, echoing in the dark, swampy night. “Put your weapons down. You are under arrest.”
The door of the construction trailer burst open and six burly men wearing black commando gear came pouring out, brandishing yet more short-barreled shotguns.
Boone froze.
“Shoot, goddammnit,” Ronnie screamed at Billy. “Shoot!”
When Billy didn’t follow his orders, he pointed his own .38 at Hernando Boone. Tripp turned sideways in his seat and, incredibly, put the barrel of his gun right to Ronnie’s temple.
“Hey, Ronnie,” Tripp announced. “I’m sorry, man. You’re busted.”
Hernando Boone picked that moment to unfreeze. He made a lunging eight-foot dive off to the left and rolled off the shoulder and into a three-foot drainage ditch. The dive and roll part of the move was an old, hated football drill from his days at the University of Florida. The hiding in a drainage ditch was something his Miccosukee ancestors had done when Andrew Jackson sent his troops to wipe out the Indians in Florida. Or so he’d always heard.
Ronnie Bondurant’s eyes never blinked. He was watching Hernando Boone. And he intended to kill every cop in Florida if it meant keeping Boone from living even one more minute.
He dropped his gun. Coiled. Waiting. Tripp gave that weasely snigger of his and took his finger off the trigger. Asshole.
Ronnie pivoted and sidearmed Tripp, catching him in the windpipe. Then again, harder. “Gaaagh.” Tripp’s eyes rolled up in his head.
Ronnie threw the car door open and turned toward the blank space where Boone had last been seen. Even before he was out of the Monte Carlo, he was firing, scattering shots in any direction Boone might move.
The FDLE commandos moved in closer and kept their shotguns aimed at the Monte Carlo, but with one of their own inside, they held their fire.
In all the confusion, nobody noticed the sixty-something gentleman with the tinted red hair who was running full speed toward the side of the Monte Carlo. Truman’s body remembered what he himself had not thought of since his days on the scrub squad at Kokomo High School back in the late forties. He tucked his head down, dropped his shoulders, and threw the whole weight of his torso against the open door of the Monte Carlo. The old body block.
Bondurant’s forehead bounced off the roof of the car, and he would have dropped like a rock, too, except that Truman, out of adrenaline and ideas, was slumped on the other side of the door, pinning Bondurant in place.
“This is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,” the frizzle-haired woman called on the megaphone. “You are under arrest.” She and half the other commandos rushed at Hernando Boone, cowering in the mosquito-engorged drainage ditch. The other half of the team veered toward the Monte Carlo. The operation went just the way they’d practiced in their SWAT team exercises. With stunning precision they grabbed Boone out of the ditch and then wrestled the bleeding, unconscious Ronnie Bondurant to the ground in order to subdue him.
When the Channel 8 Action News crew was ready, lights adjusted and cameras rolling, Ed Weingarten himself strode out of the shadows. He was wearing his own custom-designed official special-agent-in-charge black commando outfit. His uniform blouse bristled with embroidered patches, silver insignia badges, and half a dozen pockets and pouches loaded down with his portable battery pack, cell phone, beeper, pistol, and badge. The trousers snugged into high-topped lace-up black boots so new they still squeaked as he walked.
The other agents stepped respectfully aside while Special Agent in Charge Ed Weingarten personally snapped the handcuffs around Ronnie Bondurant’s wrists.
Hustled off to the side, out of concern for his safety and, yes, community relations purposes, Truman recalled yet one more football move. What was it called? A droplock? Whatever it was, it involved a kick and it made the Channel 8 cameraman drop a $26,000 Sony BetaCam.
At the studio in Tampa, the floor producer cursed softly when the live feed from Weedon Island suddenly went dead. There went his lead story. Luckily, the back-up lead was almost as good.
Action News anchorperson Sherri Lynn moistened her lips, took a cleansing breath, looked directly into the TelePrompTer, and started to read.
“Officials at the Lakeland-based Publix Supermarket chain reported today that they are gravely concerned over the theft of a tractor-trailer containing fifteen thousand pounds of tainted frozen baby-back ribs. The ribs, Publix says, were discovered to be part of a shipment of beef smuggled into the U.S. from a now defunct British processor accused of selling meat from cattle believed to have been exposed to mad cow disease. The ribs were to have been destroyed today. Health officials warn that serious illness and, in some cases, death, can result from eating mad cow exposed meat. In other news …
EPILOGUE
Truman smoothed out the newspaper pages with a loving hand. There were six—all of them front pages from The St. Petersburg Times, The Miami Herald, and yes, one from the great gray lady herself, The New York Times. His by-line, Truman Kicklighter Special Correspondent, was on all the stories, and in all but The New York Times, his story had run above the fold, what would be considered a home-run for any reporter in the land.
He hadn’t clipped any of the “human interest” stories from the dozens of papers around the country that had profiled his role in the Ronnie Bondurant murder and racketeering scheme, because he hated the fact that the reporters had focused on the fact that such accomplished career criminals as Ronnie Bondurant and Hernando Boone had been foiled by what the reporters termed “a senior sleuth and a down-on-her luck coffee shop waitress, aided by a Lilliputian newsstand clerk.” He scowled now, thinking of those stories. In his day, you never would have gotten away with that kind of crap.
And although Cheryl had taped the 60 Minutes investigative piece that had run in October, Truman had politely declined to watch it, based on what he thought was the mocking tone of that snotty Ed Bradley. Television!
His one regret in the matter was that none of the newspapers would hire him to cover Ronnie Bondurant’s trial, because he was a star witness for the prosecution. He’d done great, too, he and Jackie. Told it like it happened, never wavered under questioning from Bondurant’s sleaze-ball lawyer.
Right this minute, Ronnie Bondurant was doing life—with no parole—at the Lake Correctional Institute in central Florida. Truman had figured out how to check up on Ronnie through the state’s excellent Department of Corrections website, where he learned that Ronnie’s new home had once been a migrant worker camp and a bait farm, which he thought appropriate for a worm like Bondurant. Even better, he saw that Ronnie’s days were taken up with learning a new vocational skill—wheelchair repair.
As for Hernando Boone, Truman had been enraged when the state’s attorney offered the scumbag a deal—thirty years—in return for testifying against Bondurant and his own brother, Orlando. Both the Boone brothers were now ensconced in the state prison at Marion, where they busied themselves making corrugated cardboard boxes.
And after the guilty verdicts came in? The best surprise of all; a nice plaque from the Florida Insurors Association, acknowledging his role in busting Bondurant’s racket—along with a check for $10,000! He’d split the money with Jackie, and she’d finally bought herself a decent car—a low-mileage champagne ’92 Chevy Impala, which she’d bought from old man Drewry’s daughter—all cash— after the family finally persuaded him to give up driving.
Jackie called the car her geezer-mobile, and swore she intended to paint it red as soon as she saved up enough money, but Truman noticed she kept the car religiously washed and waxed and always parked it out of range of the Williams Park pigeons.
There was a knock at his door. It opened, and Jackie popped her head inside. “Ready to go, Mr. K?”
He closed the file folder of clippings and stood, straightening his shoulders and sneaking a peek at himself in the dresser mirror.
Truman thought he looked pretty snappy, for an old geezer. Margaret had tactfully suggested he ease off on the Nice n’ Easy, assuring him that his silvery gray hair was much more distinguished for a man of his maturity. Cheryl had helped him pick out a new navy blue suit, new dress shirt and tie. It had stunned him to realize that he hadn’t bought any new clothes at all since Nellie’s death.
Well, as Cheryl said, it was time, wasn’t it? Life went on. And these days, as it turned out, life wasn’t all bad.
“Looking good, there, Mr. K,” Jackie said admiringly. “That suit is bad.”
“Bad?” he frowned.
And she laughed. “See, bad means good. You look real clean, you know?”
He shrugged. “You look pretty bad yourself.”
Jackie did a little pirouette, and the soft folds of her red chiffon skirt swirled around her legs. She wore heels, the first time he’d ever seen her in anything but sneakers or her rubber-soled work shoes, and large sparkly gold hoop earrings that brushed her shoulder-tops.
“We better go,” Jackie said. “Everybody’s waiting, down in the lobby. Mrs. Hoffmayer, she’s giving Eddie the evil eye. Probably already called Mandelbaum to report me for having guests.”
The others were clustered nervously near the front desk in the lobby. It was an odd sensation, seeing everybody so dressed up. Eddie Nevins wore a charcoal pin-striped suit, with a red shirt that matched Jackie’s dress, and a wide white tie. He wore a large diamond stud earring in his right ear, and his close-shaven head gleamed. His face lit up in a huge smile when he spotted Jackie.
Cheryl had a new dress too, in her favorite shade of yellow, and she reminded Truman so much of Nellie, he had to swallow hard to hold back the tears. Chip, dressed in a new blue blazer and sharply creased khaki trousers grinned up at his grandfather, proud that he’d been invited to join the group for this important occasion.
The real surprise was Billy Tripp, or FDLE Agent Tripp, as he was more formally known. It was hard for Truman to recognize him these days. The lank locks had been shorn, and he’d abandoned the earring and nose-ring. Most of his cuts and bruises had healed nicely, and the glazed-over eyes had cleared up, once he’d stopped taking the anti-histamines that had achieved that effect. He cleaned up good, Truman decided. After the arrests had gone down, he’d come to know Tripp as a whip-smart investigator and cunning undercover agent. Tripp wore a button-down white dress shirt and red and blue striped rep tie under his dark blue suit.
Shyly holding Tripp’s hand was a striking dark-haired girl, who was nearly as unrecognizable as Tripp. She wore a modestly cut, gauzy, pale pink, ankle-length gown. Her hair had grown out in the past three months, to shoulder length. All traces of the former stripper were gone. Her makeup had been applied with a light hand, and she’d had her teeth fixed and the implants removed.
