A Heart as Black as Coal --

Chapter one

There are events in a man's life which serve as mileposts, things which delineate one's life into before and after. It may be a birth or a death, a wedding or a divorce, the start or end of a military conflict or it could be something as simple as a chance encounter with a future loved one. In August of 1993 I experienced something which was, for me, one of the most significant events of my life. In August of 93 I became an old man. Old age was not something that had suddenly appeared one day. I had been showing signs of age for several years. I was a bit slower in my reactions, my hair was showing a bit of silver and my attitude towards sex and exercise had been gradually evolving over the years, turning frombrute

force and domination to skill and a certain limberness of body that becomes harder to find as one ages. Still, I was in that period of middle age that stretches from one's mid forties until one is seventy five or eighty years old, provided one is not struck down by some great physical or mental shock. The thing that struck me down, both physically and mentally was my first heart attack.

It was a typical day for August in Ft. Lauderdale. Too hot and humid for any but the native Floridian. I had rigged a tarp over the upper deck of the Busted Flush and was relaxing in the balmy sea breeze with Meyer, discussing the possible impact of national health insurance and the ironies of world politics when it happened. It didn't start out as a severe pain. Rather it was a sort of a glowing pain in my chest that radiated into my neck and shoulders, not unlike some cases of heartburn I had experienced after overindulging at Shorty's barbecue. I took a healthy gulp of the sweating glass of Boodles and tonic in my hand. It had no appreciable effect on the pain. I put down the glass and got up and walked over to the ice bucket. I poured myself a glass full of the melted ice and took another large swallow, again there was no affect on the radiant pain in my chest.

Meyer has known me as long and as well as any other living human being. His perceptions of the human condition are sometimes uncanny and this time, he sensed that something was wrong with me.

"Are you feeling all right, Trav?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just a little acid indigestion I can't seem to shake.", I replied.

Myer assumed the expression of a worried mother bear and studied my face closely.

"Trav, does your neck hurt or does your jaw feel tired?", he asked with a look of concern on his broad hairy face.

I didn't reply, but the look on my face told him everything he needed

to know. I hadn't really noticed it at first but my neck and jaw did have a certain tiredness to them and I wondered how he knew that.

"Excuse me Trav," he said, "but I have a very important phone call to

make. Do you mind if I use your phone?".

"Uh, no, no I don't mind", I said. I was distracted and becoming slightly disoriented. Why should I mind if my good buddy Meyer wished to use my telephone.

Meyer disappeared below, and reappeared it seemed like mere seconds later. We resumed our conversation but, as I said, I was distracted by the continuing pain in my chest and Meyer now seemed overly cheerful in a strained sort of way. I heard the sounds of a siren wailing urgently in the distance. The sound came closer and closer. I knew they were coming for someone, but I never imagined that they were coming for me. Then Isaw the paramedics with their black bags and their white coats thumping down the dock. It was still somewhat of a shock when they came up the gangplank of the Busted Flush and asked who was having the problem. Meyer pointed to me and they went to work removing my shirt and attaching wires to my chest. Meyer began to explain the situation to me in typically Meyer fashion.

"It is a known fact that most people who die of heart attacks really die of denial. They know that something is wrong but they wait to long to go for help because they just can't admit to themselves that they are having a heart attack. Now, the possibility exists that this may just be a particularly bad case of acid indigestion and, if it is, you can accuse me of acting like a mother hen. These nice young men should be able to tell us that momentarily.", he said, not allowing me to interrupt.

All the time he was speaking, the paramedics were setting up their equipment and getting readings of the squiggly lines which were indicating the state of my mortality. They jabbered amongst them selves in their impenetrable medical jargon for a few seconds, examining a printout of the electrocardiograph. Then one of them actually spoke to me in real English.

"I think we do have some kind of cardiac event going on here, Mr..."

"McGee, Travis McGee.", Meyer supplied helpfully.

"Mr McGee, I think that we should transport you to the hospital immediately. I'm sending my assistant for the stretcher now and I'm going to put you on oxygen now," he said as he unlimbered a small cylinder and some plastic tubing attached to a mask. "How long have you been having chest pain?".

Meyer glanced at his watch and informed the attendant that he figured the time at about twenty five minutes or so.

"That's good. We still have plenty of time to make it to the hospital inside that golden hour," he said with as much sincerity as he could muster.

"The golden hour,", Meyer explained to me, "is that first hour following the blockage of one of the coronary arteries. If the patient makes it to the hospital inside of that first hour, chances are that the blockage can be removed with little or no damage to the heart muscle. Once that time has expired, the damage to the heart can never be completely repaired and the damage may actually extend to the point where the heartis no longer able to function and we all know what happens when your heart is not functional."

Meyer's attempt at humor was lost on me. The pain had worsened considerably despite the oxygen. It now hurt to breathe and even my teeth had begun to ache. The attendant appeared with the stretcher and they shuffled me aboard and strapped me down. Despite the heat and humidity they were most energetic as they hustled me down the dock towards the parking lot and the waiting ambulance. A small crowd had gathered to watch the show. Most of them were familiar to me as residents of the Marina. They all looked concerned, but at the moment I wouldn't have cared if they were all naked and shaking gourds and rattles around my body. They hustled me into the back of the ambulance and I heard Meyer saying something about seeing me at the hospital as the rear doors thumped shut.

I heard the whooping and wailing of the siren as we negotiated our way through city traffic heading for the hospital and salvation. The pain in my chest had gotten worse. If you have ever seen that movie where the small alien creature is tunneling its way out of the astronaut’s chest while he is still alive, you may have some idea of what I was going through. It felt like there was some creature in my chest struggling frantically to get out. By the time I arrived at the hospital I hadpassed beyond the pain and felt like I was floating a couple of feet above the stretcher. I wondered then if I was going to die. The idea really didn't bother me all that much at that point. They hooked me up to an IV drip while the doctor and the paramedic exchanged medical mumbo jumbo. I was injected with streptokinase, a powerful clot dissolver, and the change was amazing. Within minutes I had stopped floating above the stretcher and the creature writhing my chest had retreated to it's egg. The pain in my neck and chest was rapidly subsiding and I began to feel somewhat human again.

Meyer was allowed in to see me when I was more myself.

"How, are we feeling?," he asked somewhat tentatively.

"We? I don't know how ‘we’ are feeling but I am feeling much better, thank you very much. When can I get out of here?," I asked without a sign of gratitude for the fact that he had undoubtedly saved my life.

"I think we had better let the doctor decide that. The fact thatyou are free of pain and not having any difficulty breathing makes me suspect that your stay here will not be an overly long one. Besides that, do you have, and I suspect that you don't, any form of health insurance?," Meyer asked, sounding much more like the Meyer I have come to know and love.

"Health insurance?," I parroted. Health insurance is for sick people. Health insurance is for old people. Health insurance is for families in the process of reproducing the species. I had never plannedon

living this long. I am a salvage expert. I specialize in retrieving things of value which have been lost beyond the grasp of the law or the ability of lawyers to get them back. My fee for this service is half of the value of said lost things. This line of work brings me into close contact with some very violent and unscrupulous people. I have been shot, stabbed, slashed, half-drowned and pummeled within an inch of my life more times than I care to remember. The money I make in this line of work allows me to take my retirement in chunks spread throughout the span of my life. It allows me to enjoy some leisure while I still have all my faculties rather than slowly rotting away in a nursing home for the last few years. I thought I would die in an alley with a bullet in my chest and blood in my mouth. I never figured that I would survive all the mayhem in my life, including the Korean war, and wind up in need of health insurance.

"How much is this likely to cost?," I asked Meyer, not bothering to trot out my philosophy of life.

"Seeing as how you don't have a fat cash cow of an insurance policy to be milked, I would say that your stay in the hospital, probably three or four days, plus the battery of tests and any treatment they might prescribe, will run you in the neighborhood of twenty to thirty thousand dollars, give or take a few thousand."

This reminded me of something said by Everett Dirksen, longtime speaker of the house of representatives in Washington D.C. He said, "A billion here and a billion there, pretty soon your talking some real money!." The twenty thousand dollars Meyer so casually mentioned would be enough to keep me relatively comfortable for nigh on a year, provided the Busted Flush didn't conspire to need some expensive repair to her inner workings or I didn't have an urge to exercise the diesels on a lengthy jaunt through the Caribbean. I did have more than that in the moneystash, plus there were some investments in mutual funds recommended by Meyer, but the money nerves were jangling at the thought of shelling out twenty thousand for a few days in the hospital.

I guess the cost of medical care shouldn't have come as such a shock to me. After all, I was lying in the intensive care section of the emergency room in a big city hospital. Outside in the waiting room were several dozen people waiting their turn to see a doctor with illnesses and injuries that were not really emergencies. They were like me in someways, in that they had no regular doctor and no health insurance, but, unlikeme, they would not be able to pay for their own treatment. The cost of that treatment is passed along, in one way or another, to those of us who are able to pay either for the treatment or for health insurance premiums. Some hospitals have stopped the hypocrisy of charging five dollars for an aspirin and have simply added an "indigent health care" surcharge to every bill they send out. I suppose this might be calling a spade a spade, but it doesn't make it any cheaper. Add to this a mix of greedy doctors, greedy lawyers, greedy patients and greedy insurance companies and you get a situation where defensive medicine, excessive paperwork and insane malpractice judgments eat up huge amounts of the dollars we spend on health care.

"Don't worry about your money right now Trav. Your health is something that you can't replace, your money is," Meyer said, reading my mind again. Just then the doctor strolled into the room, a man young enough to be my son. It never ceases to amaze me how people who are young enough to be my children keep getting older and older.

"Well Mr. McGee, it appears that you have dodged a major bullet this time. Your EKG shows no signs of permanent damage to the heart muscle and your blood also tests negative for signs of damage. We would like toadmit you for some tests to determine the extent of your risk for future heart problems," he said so in a manner so matter of fact that I was actually reassured.

"Would it be possible for me to go home tonight and come back later for the testing? I really feel fine right now," I asked without much hope that he would agree.

"Mr. McGee, we don't hold anyone prisoner here and, if you insist, we can discharge you immediately, with a notation on your record that you were doing it against the strong recommendation of your physician. Let me ask you this, how did you feel an hour before you noticed your chest pain? If your friend, Mr. Meyer had not called the paramedics when he did, you could have been here for weeks, if you had survived at all."

I didn't say anything, just knitted my brows and nodded in agreement.

"We'll have you admitted to the hospital and schedule the tests.You should be out of here in a few days. One of the administrative aides will be by to get your information and then we'll get you settled in the intensive care unit".

"Intensive care?", I squawked in dismay.

"Yup,", he said, making a note on my chart, "best place in the world to have a heart attack. Don't worry, we won't keep you there any longer than necessary."

Just then a commotion at the front door took his attention away from me. A grim faced young man came through the door with a very small, very blue child in his arms. Behind him came a red faced young woman screaming at the top of her lungs about her baby, as if the sheer volume of her pleading would revive the child.

"Jesus,", said the doctor shaking his head, "blue children and screaming mothers. Of all the ugly things I see in here, I hate this one the most."

An amazing number of children drown in this country every year and Florida has much more than it's fair share. You would think that in a rain sodden state like this one, with drainage canals galore, swimming pools abounding, "lakes" situated in the middle of many housing developments and the ocean no more than seventy miles from any point in the state, that parents would teach their children to swim. Even worse, a lot of the parents themselves don't learn to swim. There is a place on the northern approach to the Tampa Bay Skyway bridge where families go to picnic and fish. The water is shallow there and it is possible to stroll along for hundreds of yards without getting more than knee deep. One step in the wrong direction can land you in water over your head with a nice little current to pull you off shore. No major problem for even a noviceswimmer, but deadly for the non swimmer. Whole families drown in these traps. First mom gets caught and when her children or husband come out to save her, she drowns them one by one until there are no more left and she drowns herself.

I once saw an episode of World at War, a documentary produced by the BBC, which dealt with genocide. One of the survivors of Aushwitcz who had worked in the gas chambers described what he saw when the doors of the chamber were opened. He said there would always be a pyramid of bodies all tangled together, tapering up to a point underneath the vent through which the gas pellets were dropped. At the very top of that pyramid would be the body of a single person who had clawed his way to the top of that desperate, dying pile of humanity for the privilege of drawing a few more breaths and outliving his companions by a minute or two. The need to breathe is a very powerful addiction.

After a while the administrative person came to take information regarding my name, age, sex, address and means of payment. She showed no signs of disapproval but she did have me sign a paper promising that I would pay the bill come hell or high water. After that an orderly came and trundled me off to the elevator for the ride up to the cardiac intensive care unit. I was hooked up to the monitoring machinery and had an IV installed but they skipped the oxygen this time. I guess they decided that I was not knocking on heaven's door right at the moment. I had to threaten mutiny before they decided that I didn't really need a catheter and that I probably wouldn't die on my way to the john.

Meyer hung around for a while and made comforting small talk until visiting hours were over. Shortly after he left the gentleman in the bed to my left had his last heart attack and despite much scrambling and thumping followed by three or four massive shocks to the chest from the defibrillator, he was let go. His monitor, which was putting out a flat tone was turned off. They covered him with a sheet and called his family. For some strange reason, his death made me homesick.

I lay there on my back in that alien environment feeling that, if I could just get back to slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar marina and curl up inthe familiar bunk of the old Busted Flush, that everything would be all right. By this time it was late in the evening. My eyes were open wide. I was wondering how the hell I was going to get any sleep. The next thing I remember was an angel in white gently waking me so that I could have breakfast.

Chapter 2

The breakfast was not much, but under the circumstances, it was one of the best I had ever eaten. No one had died during the night, especially me, so I was feeling more composed. Other than a check of my blood pressure and other vital signs not much happened for the first hour or so. Then a man wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard walked up to my bed. He was definitely not young enough to be my son. He turned out to be my cardiologist. Up until that moment I didn't even know I had a cardiologist.

"Good morning Mr. McGee. My name is Dr Lane. I've been assigned to your case. If you wish to use the services of another doctor you may, of course, do so," he said with a pleasant smile on his broad, smooth shaven face.

"Well, doctor, as of this moment you are the only cardiologist I know. I guess you’ll do. Besides, you're not young enough to be my son. That gives me a certain feeling of confidence," I said returning his smile and extending my hand.

His grip was strong and dry. It felt like the hand of someone who wasn’t nervous or prone to attacks of panic.

"I have the results of the blood tests we ran on you last night Mr. McGee. Your cholesterol is on the high side. I've seen worse, but it is still more than high enough to cause plaque buildup in the coronary arteries. Now, some people like to try a combination of diet and exercise to lower their cholesterol and in some people that works quite nicely. However, some people are doomed by their genetic make up to produce high amounts of cholesterol regardless of what they eat. You don't appear to be in bad shape Mr. McGee. Do you smoke cigarettes?"

"No, not for many years," I replied.

"Excellent. You probably would have had this attack many years ago and probably would have died from it had you been a smoker. I am going to prescribe some cholesterol lowering drugs which should get your serum cholesterol under control. A little exercise and cutting down on saturated fats wouldn't hurt either. I have scheduled you for an angiogram this afternoon. It will give us a better picture of exactly what we are dealing with. It’s a fairly routine procedure but not without risk. From what I see on the admitting physician's report about the evidence of old bullet and knife wounds, I would guess that you are a veteran of high risk procedures. Let me explain how we do an angiogram. We are going to make a small incision in one of the arteries in your groin area. Then we will feed a catheter through your arteries to your heart. The catheter will release some dye which can be followed by a type of fluoroscope as it flows through your coronary arteries. If we spot a localized blockage, we can use more or less the same procedure to do an angioplasty. In an angioplasty we inflate a small balloon inside the artery to squash the

plaque back against the artery walls. The great advantage to this is that there is no major surgery and recovery is almost immediate, not to mention that it's much cheaper," he said.

"Sounds good to me.", I said, thinking of my rapidly dwindling money stash.

"Very well, Mr. McGee. See you around two, providing we don't get preempted in the operating room by a bullet riddled drug hooligan," he said.

He smiled and shook my hand once again before leaving.

Meyer stopped by when visiting hours arrived. As usual he was a font of knowledge about everything from bypasses to transplants and was quite enthusiastic about the cost/ benefit ratio of the balloon angioplasty. The nurse arrived to prep me for the operation. It hadn't occurred to me that I would have my pubic hair shaved off by a sweet young lady who looked young enough to be my granddaughter! She didn't even have the decency to blush as she removed every trace of hair from around my genitals. Her only response to my incipient erection was to threaten me with the male nurse if I didn't behave myself. Meyer was hugely amused and made small attempt to hide it. I was loaded on a gurney and trundled down the hall to the elevator and from there to the operating room.

They administered a local anesthetic before beginning the procedure. I didn't feel much of anything as they maneuvered the catheter into position and injected the dye. The machines whirred and clicked and the

doctors mumbled medical stuff to each other and then it was over. It was amazing. When they had the catheter in position they injected radio active dye that made my arteries visible as it flowed through them. There was a television screen above me so that I could watch it myself. I felt the warm flush as the dye was injected and then I watched as my arteries became visible, pulsing and throbbing on the screen before me.

I was taken back to the ICU to await the visit of the doctor. I didn't have too long to wait. Dr. Lane returned to my bedside early that afternoon. Meyer was with me again and the doctor gave him a look as though he would like him to leave.

"Is it ok if Meyer hangs around Doc? He understands this stuff much better than I do and I might need him to translate.", I said, really wishing I had someone's hand to hold. This heart business was scarier than a large maniac with a sharp knife. At least you could kill a maniac. Your heart has you at it's mercy if it suddenly decides to malfunction.

"Yes, Mr. McGee. Your friend can stay if he wishes. I have the results of your angiogram. We have a case here of the good news and the bad news. The good news is that there was no damage from your episode yesterday. The bad news is that you are skating on thin ice as far as your prognosis is concerned. I don't know if you have ever heard of collateral arteries before. They are a mechanism used by the heart to provide additional blood flow to areas which are being starved for blood. It's sort of like traffic being etoured to side streets as the main streets become congested with traffic. The main streets are becoming narrower because they are cluttered with abandoned cars. The side streets are being widened and improved. Your heart is a classic example of this process.

"Of the five major coronary arteries, four of yours are almost completely blocked. The other major artery is supplying most of the blood flow through collaterals. Your last really good coronary artery is itself about thirty percent blocked. If that artery becomes blocked at almost any point you will undoubtedly suffer a fatal attack.

"Well, that certainly is a bit of cheery news. Is there anything we can do about it?" I asked, not feeling as flippant as I sounded.

"The first thing I will do, in addition to the cholesterol lowering drugs, is to put you on blood thinners. We'll try to avoid the fatal clot. I'll also give you some nitro pills to take if you feel something going wrong in your chest. The second thing I would like to do, Mr. McGee, is a quadruple bypass operation. I know that this is one of the most frequently performed unnecessary operations done in the United States, but in your case I feel that it could significantly improve your chances for survival."

"I hate to bring up money, Doc, but what does a quadruple bypass go for these days?" I asked.

"That depends on who is paying and who is holding the knife. If your insurance company is paying it would probably go for around a hundred and fifty thousand, with me holding the knife. If you don't have insurance and I like you I might do it for around a hundred and twenty. You might find it cheaper but you won't find any better Mr. McGee. You can check into my reputation if you like and get back to me later."

"I appreciate your honesty doc, I don't have any insurance but I might be able to raise the cash," I said as I wondered where the hell I could come up with that kind of money in a hurry." Just exactly how urgent is this operation?".

"As I said Mr. McGee, your heart has done a remarkably good job of collateralization. It could go years without a problem or any sign of cardiac insufficiency. I would, however, avoid any extreme exertion. I don't mean you shouldn't do anything in the least aerobic, just don't get severely oxygen depleted."

"Why is that?", I asked.

"That is because if your heart is working extremely hard to pump your blood, the plaque lining your arteries can rupture and break off in large chunks. If that happens blockage would be sudden and total. You would probably die in minutes and even a shot of clot dissolving medicine would do absolutely no good," he said with a look of real concern on his face.

"What about sex?," I asked.

"That shouldn't be a problem as long as it isn't prolonged or extremely violent. Stay away from teenage girls with whips and chains and you shouldn't have any problems," he said with a chuckle. "We're going to keep you another day and if you are still trouble free we will discharge you in the morning," he said. He left after that and I went into conference with Meyer.

"Trav, I know how you feel about borrowing money from friends," he said with that tone he uses when he is trying to talk sense to me and he knows that I'm in no mood to be sensible.

"Yes, well I still feel the same way. Something will come along, it's about time. In the meanwhile I'll take my pills and try to live with the time bomb in my chest. You know my policy of taking my retirement in little chunks. Given the fact that the average retiree in the state of Florida lives, on the average, only eighteen months after he arrives here, I have had far more than my share of retirement."

"Trav,", Myer said holding up a dollar bill, "Do you know what this is. It is nothing more than a piece of paper with some green ink on it. The only thing that makes it worth anything is the fact that an American will still give you something in exchange for it. I have many of these pieces of paper and I would gladly give some of them to the medical profession in order to prolong your miserable life. You're aggravating McGee, but I've gotten used to having your ugly puss around."

I didn't say anything. I just set my face in a stubborn and stony mask of passive resistance.

Meyer gave up. I knew that he had the money and would be more than happy to give it to me, but I was not about to take it no matter how desperate I was. Life is a gamble and I decided to take another chance on mine.

Chapter 3

The nurse wheeled me to the front door in a wheelchair despite my protestations that I could walk perfectly well. I guess it's a hospital tradition brought on by fear of malpractice suits. Meyer was there in his worthy but unexciting automobile to take me home. We arrived at the marina in due course and walked out on the dock to the Busted Flush, which was pretty much the way I had left it except that Meyer had washed the glasses and put them away.

A few of the regulars dropped by to wish me well, but I really wasn't in the mood for visiting. I excused myself, saying that I was tired and needed a little shut eye. I went below and crawled into the boat's spacious bunk. I took off my clothes and sprawled naked on the familiar sheets waiting for healing sleep to overtake me. What I would have given two nights ago just to be in this berth one more time. I think that if I had died in the hospital my ghost would have haunted this boat seeking solace.

It's funny when you think about it. This boat, this collection of mahogany, cypress, canvas and steel meant more to me than just about anyone I could name. There were, of course, people for whom I would trade the boat if it came to that. People like Meyer or my Daughter Jean, for example. But not all that many. This boat had been part of me for longer than any woman I had known and I had been more faithful to her than I had been to any woman. I had won her in a poker game with a south American playboy many years ago when he had failed to turn up a needed card for a flush that would have won the pot and cleaned me out. Hence the name, "The Busted Flush". Since that day she has sheltered me from the world and I have kept her viable, a wooden boat in the age of fiberglass. Keeping one jump ahead of the dry rot and teredo worms that haunt wooden boats in southern waters. We were a team of sorts and now I was back in her big, comfortable bunk listening to her familiar creaks and smelling her familiar smells, feeling safe again.

Sleep wouldn't come until I turned on the stereo and put on some Latin jazz just loud enough to disguise the beating of my heart. I had never really noticed that sound before. I fell asleep before the tape had played through one whole side and slept for four hours. I awoke in familiar surroundings, feeling much better. I still had the time bomb in my chest. It was still ticking. I decided to go up on deck and enjoy the fading daylight and the sunset out over the glades. The patches of clear water sent shafts of pink light up through the blue of the sky. This whole thing was, of course, framed by the wall of condos which define the coast of southeast Florida.

I sometimes wonder if the predictions of some scientists come true and global warming melts the polar ice caps, submerging much of south Florida, if these condos might form the skeletons of new reefs and what types of sea life would thrive in the elegant lobbies. I wondered if I would live to see the day.

Meyer came by and, as usual, he had things all doped out. He reminded me of an over animated circus bear as he spewed out his plans. I noticed that he was wearing running shoes.

"Trav, I brought you a little welcome home gift. I hope they’re the right size. I took the liberty of checking some of the shoes you have on the boat," he said with a broad grin on his hirsute face.

"They seem to be the right size Myer, but I really don't think I need to start running just yet," I said.

"Those aren't running shoes, they’re walking shoes. Specifically designed for walking," he explained patiently.

Walking is a growth industry in America. With the aging of the baby boomers and the accompanying physical decline, more and more people are looking for ways to keep themselves in some sort of reasonable condition. When the ankles and knees can no longer sustain running and sports calling for lots of physical activity, one can still walk. People walk on trails and city streets, They walk in the air conditioned malls to escape the weather. There are numerous books and magazines having to do with the art of walking. Now I was discovering that they made shoes exclusively for the sport of walking.

I tried them on. Considering the fact that they were brand new they were surprisingly comfortable. I took a few strides around the deck.

"Very good Myer, you done good!", I said as Myer beamed approval.

"I also took the liberty of getting your prescriptions filled," he said holding out a small white paper bag with labels stapled to it.

Pills, prescriptions. I had joined the elderly with their ever growing numbers of pills and potions crowding the medicine cabinet. It made me feel older than I did when I looked at the sweet young things in their butt floss bikinis who were young enough to be my granddaughters.

"I laid out a course on the beach with a pedometer and I have mileposts for a one, two or three mile walk. I figure we can start out slow and work our way up to three or four miles a day. They say walking is the best exercise," Myer said with growing enthusiasm.

How could I say no? We started out with a one mile walk during which I broke a light sweat. Myer was puffing and drenched by the time we returned although I was the one with the bad heart.

Over the next month or so I ate healthy food which Myer insisted on cooking for me. He wasn't a bad cook but I began to long for a big, greasy pepperoni pizza (extra cheese please). Myer lost thirty pounds and was in the best shape I had ever seen him in. I still had the time bomb in my chest, not enough money for the bypass and way too much pride to borrow it from Myer. After a month of doing healthy things and eating healthy food and restricting my alcohol intake to a couple of glasses of red wine with dinner, I snapped. I found myself coming out of the market with a package of lean ground beef, a big hunk of white cheddar, some kaiser rolls and a pound of streaky bacon. I went back to the marina and rigged the stainless steel charcoal grill over the stern rail of the ‘Flush and lit a fire in it. When Myer came up the gangplank with a brown paper bag full of roots and berries or something equally appetizing he had a look of disappointment and concern on his face.

"What are you doing there", he asked.

"Cooking!", I said, flourishing a spatula in one hand and a sweating glass of Boodles and ice in the other, "Cooking some real food for a change."

Myer shrugged, set his bag down on the deck and said, "Toss one on for me, will you. I'm dying for some real food myself."

I know that it wasn't good for me, but I was in the mood for a thick, juicy burger drooling with melted cheddar. Jimmy Buffet, one of the local musical heroes, sings a song called ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’. I never appreciated that song until I spent a month living on roots and twigs.

The atmosphere must have been contagious because a few of the regulars stopped by and then a few more came with some new friends and, before you know it we had a respectable party going. I didn't get horribly drunk, but then I never do. I had four or five glasses of Boodles over the course of the evening and a beer to wash down the burger. Maybe I was taking the same approach to heaven that I have always taken to retirement because that evening was a small slice of heaven to me.

It was sometime after midnight when the party wound down. I found myself down below with a vacationing history professer from Hartford, Connecticut. She said she was a tenured professor at Hartford College for Women. She said to call her Lizzy. We were listening to some of my jazz collection and having a most pleasant conversation, so pleasant that I hadn't noticed the time passing. When I noticed the time I excused myself to check on my guests up on deck. When I got up on deck I discovered that I had none left.

"We appear to be alone," I said climbing back down the main hatchway, "The time certainly has flown."

"No, complaints here, Trav. It's not past your bedtime, is it?", she asked.

"By all means, no," I said, not feeling tired in the least.

I went into the head and relieved my bladder. When I came out she was standing next to the bar with a fresh drink in her hand. She had big green eyes and glossy black hair just beginning to show a few gray stands. She was totally nude. Her breasts were tender and tight skinned with nipples the color of pink coral. Her torso flowed smoothly down to the sensuous flair of her hips. A thick patch of black pubic hair hid the meeting of her thighs. I took a step towards her and she stepped lightly into my arms.

She kissed expertly, using her teeth and tongue and lips in perfect balance. She hummed and laughed with pleasure when I nuzzled her neck. I slid my left hand slowly down the slope of her silken belly and claimed the sweetly furred prize between her thighs. She hissed with pleasure and her labia immediately distended as she deposited a considerable amount of lubrication on my fingers. I hadn't had sex for over a month and, time bomb or no, I had such a hammer handle in my pants.

"Listen, I have this medical problem", I said, thinking of the time bomb once again.

"Do you have aids?", she asked, a fair question in this day and age.

"No, but..," I stumbled, trying to put my thoughts into words as she unzipped my shorts and reached in to fondle my erection.

"Well in that case just relax, my dear, you're going to get laid tonight".

She had me naked by the time we got to the bunk. She rolled me onto my back and kissed me with passion and skill, molding her supple body to mine. Her skin was silken to the touch.

"Just hold it up and let me make the rhythm", she said straddling my loins and positioning herself to take me inside.

She gave a little gasp of pain and pleasure as she sank down on my shaft and her insides adjusted to my girth. Then her hips proceeded to do the undulating pleasure dance of sex. I managed to hold out until she had climaxed three times before I had my own soft explosion inside her. It's funny how it builds up, no matter how faint the feeling at first, until it becomes impossible to hold back. She collapsed on the mattress beside me glowing with pleasure and letting the overtaxed machinery cool down. I got a big glass of ice water and we shared it before we drifted off to sleep. I awoke the next morning. I was still alive and she was still there.

Chapter 4

I awoke to the scent of brewing coffee. The sun was just beginning to stream through the porthole, shining a lurid red beam across the cabin. I rolled out of the bunk and slipped into the head to relieve my bladder and then slipped on a pair of soft, faded khaki shorts. When I walked into the galley area she was bent over, peering into the reefer.

"Heart problem," she said.

"What's that?", I replied.

"You have a heart problem. I don't see anything in here but tofu and skim milk. Your cabinets are loaded with roots, twigs and oat bran. The man with whom I so delightfully fornicated last night is not an oat bran sort of person."

She had me. I explained my condition to her, leaving out the more traumatic parts. I showed her the medications I had been taking and the diet and exercise program I had been on.

"Does this mean that you might have had the big one last night while we were doing the dirty deed?", she asked, one eyebrow raised in question.

"The doctor told me that sex was ok as long as I stayed away from whips and chains," I said, managing a genuine if somewhat sheepish smile.

"Oh, drat! I was so looking forward to those whips and chains. Could I interest you in some good clean fun?"

"That depends what it is." I replied.

"Let's take a shower together."

She had me again. The bathroom on the Busted Flush is large and elegant, especially for a boat. Most boats have claustrophobic little spaces combining shower and toilet. The Flush not only has a shower which will accommodate several people but a sunken tub just made for hot, soapy, sensuous fun. This boat was designed by a South American playboy with the specific intent of pleasuring wenches. He wasn't much of a poker player, but as a boat designer I had yet to find his equal.

"How long are you going to be down here?" I asked.

"I managed to ditch my responsibilities for two whole weeks. I have about ten days left, including a day to fly back north and return to sanity," she said, snuggling up to my side and enjoying the bodily contact.

"How would you like to take a slow cruise down the keys in the old Busted Flush?" I said, making the offer a split second after it blossomed in my brain.

"To key west?", she asked.

"Not unless you want to fly back from there. We only do about six knots, eight with a new bottom, which we don't have. Besides, Key West is a major tourist trap and I would like to show you my Florida," I said, as I explored the line of her clavicle above her right breast.

"Well, I suppose we could think of things to do to pass the time," she said. She took one slender finger and performed what she called her "hara kiri" maneuver. She drew a line with her finger from the point just above my knee, up my thigh, across my belly and down the other thigh. Her touch was light. I felt little electric worms crawling under the skin wherever she touched. Before she made it to my navel, I was stirring. By the time she was down the other thigh I was fully erect. Then she held me down and wantonly used me for her pleasure. The woman was a witch.

I broke into the money stash for a supply of food, booze and diesel fuel. I left Meyer clucking on the dock and we chugged out of the marina to the inter coastal and headed south. Sailing the Flush is a lot like sailing a sail boat in that you can't be in a great hurry to get anywhere. She cruises grandly along to the throb of the diesels as the scenery moves slowly by. Sooner or later you get where you are going.

We anchored in Biscayne Bay the first night out and enjoyed the sunset and the conversation. Miami was far enough away so that the sound of sirens and sporadic gunfire could not be heard, but close enough to make a dramatic backdrop for the flaming sunset accented by a few thunderheads hanging out over the glades.

Miami is a troubled yet vibrant city. It has the best Cuban restaurants in the world. The best used to be in Cuba, but nobody can afford to eat there anymore. This is mostly due to the squeeze of the American trade embargo and the recent collapse of the Soviet Union. Miami has an active music scene and no fewer than seven troupes of wild monkeys prowling its trees and rooftops. Enough tropical birds have escaped from private owners to start flocks of several different species of parrot. Hurricane Andrew liberated dozens of different animals into the everglades where they quite happily took up permanent residence. Miami is also a good place to get shot if you wander into the wrong neighborhood, sometimes even if you don't. There are a lot of desperate people living in Miami. Desperate people do desperate things.

We headed out the ship cut and cruised down the Hawk channel. We fished and ate and laughed a lot. She used a fifty percent sun block and slowly tanned her lovely body to a golden glow. We docked at a marina one night and took a long, hot luxurious shower together in the marina's facility. The Flush has a shower but any boat has a limited supply of fresh water so we had to conserve when we anchored out.

We danced to a steel drum band and got slightly loaded on exotic rum drinks. We made love when we felt like it, but it was an unspoken agreement between us that we wouldn't force it. Although we didn't say it out loud we were both afraid that if I went to long and too hard, I might have the big one right there in the bunk. When we made love, we were ready for each other. The climaxes were easy and extremely pleasurable. I would spend a long time getting her ready before I took her so that she would usually climax two or three times before I did.

We stopped to snorkel and fish along the reef which traces the southwesterly curve of the keys. These are the only living coral reefs left in the continental waters of the United States. They survive despite the attack mounted on them by recreational divers and fishermen. Some types of coral will die from the touch of a human hand and the snagged anchors and fishing lines slowly chip away at it. In addition to this, the sheer weight of human numbers release so much nitrogen through treated sewage water that some reefs have been overcome by green algae. They say that everyone who moves to Florida becomes a conservationist. The best thing they could do for the ecology in Florida would be to get the hell out. Fat chance.

We went four days out and four days back, not really keeping track of the distance as much as the time. When we go back to the dock we still had a whole day left to unwind before she had to return north. As Yogi Berra used to say, it was deja vu all over again. I awoke in the morning to an empty bed and a note on the table. I don't know why I seem to attract so many women bent on intense short term affairs who can't look me in the eye when it's time to go. I read the note.

"Dear Travis, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed our little cruise but I have to head back north now and I don't want to get involved with addresses and phone numbers and the like. I am a college professor but I lied about where. I have a permanent live in at home and I don't think she would welcome you with open arms if you showed up on my doorstep. Although I am a lesbian for the most part, I still have a taste for an occasional male lover. I also had another reason for choosing to have all of that delicious sex with you. I would like to have a child and I was looking for a sperm donor to supply the necessary genetic material. It is a definite possibility that you may have one of those children that you ’don't know of’. You may be kind of chauvy Travis, but I'm sure you have great genes. I pray to God you didn't have a vasectomy. I promise that I won't sue you for child support. I'll send you a postcard if I spawn. Lots of love and again, thanks for the genetic material and especially the way it was delivered. Love, Lizzy."

I went up on deck with a cup of coffee and was sipping it and considering whether I should rerig the tarp when Meyer came aboard.

"How are you feeling Trav?", he asked, a worried look on his broad and hairy face.

"Like a real human again, my friend. Read this," I said handing him Lizzie's note. He read it and then handed it back.

"You really ought to become a gigolo and go into business. Why should you let them have it for free?", he said, the worried face was now replaced by a smile.

"Why don't you?", I asked with Meyer's many Iron Ladies in mind.

"I like to think of the affairs I have with the iron ladies as being for the good of humanity as well as for the good of the ladies themselves. Most of those women are in positions of authority at large corporations. They are in a position to ruin the lives and health of scores of other employees. The service I provide makes these women more human and allows them to concentrate on their work rather than take out their sexual frustration on their underlings. It's better for the company they work for and all of the people they come in contact with."

I had to smile. To look at Meyer's shaggy bearlike frame, even after the weight he had lost trying to rehabilitate me, one would hardly think of him as a therapeutic lover. Meyer had been to the grocery store in anticipation of my return. Lizzie went back North. I went back to walking the beach and living on roots and twigs.

Chapter 5

He was waiting for me in the parking lot of the marina when I returned from my morning stroll on the beach. His black Cadillac limousine idled quietly, supplying the interior with cool, dry air. He must have

known what I looked like because as I approached his chauffeur opened the door. He stepped out and called my name.

"Mr. McGee? Mr. Travis McGee?," he asked extending a steady, but weathered hand.

He was tall, lean and weathered like an old scrub oak. He wore a grey Stetson hat with the ease and lack of self consciousness that only a Texan can achieve. I took his hand and felt strength in his smooth dry grasp. I imagined that his hand had been a lot less smooth at one time in his life. His hand had the size and scars of one that has done much hard physical work. I would have guessed his age to be in the mid sixties. I found out later that he was pushing eighty.

"What can I do for you?," I asked.

"I understand that you are in the salvage business Mr. McGee, and I am here to offer you a project," he said, "won't you step into my office?"

I climbed into the back of the limo and settled back into the soft leather seats. The door closed and there was a sudden cessation of sound from outside. He handed me a large manila envelope. I opened it and on the top was an 8 x 10 photo of a young girl. She had glossy black hair and large brown eyes. She was just beginning to show the promise of beautiful womanhood. She appeared to be about twelve years of age.

"That is my daughter Mr. McGee. Perhaps I should fill you in on a little of her history. I am a rich man Mr. McGee, Texas rich. I made money by being smart and mean and tough back when this century was young and a man could become rich that way. I never wanted to marry because I didn't trust anyone worth a damn, especially women. I took to hiring Mexican maids to keep my house clean and satisfy my sexual needs. They were poor women. I paid them well enough so they could go back to Mexico and buy a little spread of their own. Maybe start a cantina. Part of the agreement I made with these women was that there would be no children.

"Then there was Lupe. She got pregnant despite taking precautions and when I told her to get it taken care of she refused. She said she couldn't do that and that she would go back to Mexico and raise the child herself if I didn't want it. She didn't show any emotion at first, but I heard her crying in her room that night and those tears finally melted a small portion of this old man's heart. I let her stay and have the baby. I never did marry Lupe, but I loved that little girl. We had quite a little family for a few years, me and Lupe and little Miraflor, or Mira as we called her. Then Lupe got sick. She developed ovarian cancer and all of my money couldn't keep her alive. After she died I withdrew from life for a while. I lived for business, making money and wheeling and dealing on a grand scale. Sometimes I didn't see Mira for weeks at a time. About four months ago she let me know how she felt about that by running away from home. She went to New York City and disappeared. I found out later that she had become a virtual slave to some outfit up there that specializes in supplying young girls for sex with grown men. I found that out because I hired the best man I could find in Texas. He found out that much before they caught him and sent him home in an ambulance. He still hasn't recovered from the experience. You will find his name and address in that envelope, together with an advance of one hundred thousand dollars in cash. I am prepared to pay you ten million dollars cash for the safe return of my daughter Mr. McGee. Ten million dollars cash with no word of it to the federal government.

I am aware of your medical condition thanks to the snooping of another private detective and a large contribution to the building fund of a certain local hospital. I hope you don't feel the need to have surgery before you undertake this project Mr. McGee. I realize that you are taking a risk, but time, Mr. McGee, is of the essence."

I considered the offer for a good thirty seconds before I accepted. In addition to having a heart condition and a need for a large sum of cash, I also had a daughter.

"I'll do my best, Mr. ?", I let the question hang.

"Johnson, sir. No relation to Lyndon, I'm afraid."

"I take it there is information in here on how to contact you should the need arise?", I asked.

"There is sir."

I shook his hand and got out of the limo. Meyer and I walked slowly up the dock to the Busted Flush. "What's up?", he asked.

"The funds for my operation just showed up, providing I live long enough to collect them. I have a new client. A very rich client. A very rich client with a missing daughter."

Chapter 6

The man lived in a small town in the Texas hill country. It was in the general vicinity of Austin. I booked a flight out the next day to Houston on US Air. It takes less time to drive from Houston to Austin than it does to wait for the next connecting flight to Austin. It sort of brings to mind the old Vermonter saying, "You can't get there from here". I guess there just aren't enough folks from Austin n a hurry to get to Florida.

Austin is fast becoming the new silicon valley. There are a number of reasons for this. The University of Texas has a big research center there. All of the surrounding communities are giving tax breaks to the high tech companies. Apple, IBM, DELL and a host of other smaller companies have established facilities there and more are coming all the time. Add to those reasons, the laid back Texas life style and relatively clean air and you have the recipe for a boom. There is now non-stop service between San Jose and Austin, which shows where most of the passenger revenue is coming from.

I drove through Austin after about three and a half hours and headed up into the hill country. The hill country is thousands of square miles of low rolling hills following the contour of the underlying limestone. The hills are covered with knee high grass and scrubby junipers and mesquite. They aren't good for much, but hunting and grazing cattle. It took me another hour or so to find the small town the man lived in and another forty five minutes of driving around and asking questions to find the man's house. His name was J.R.Bonner. The J.R. didn't stand for anything, he was just J.R. It was a real Texas name and belonged to a real Texas man. His house was down at the end of a winding, dusty driveway about a quarter of a mile through the scrub.

I was greeted by several noisy hounds and two large and curious Dobermans. I sat in the car until he appeared on the porch, a cane in one hand and a hunting rifle in the other.

"Are you J.R.Bonner?" I shouted over the din.

"That I am. State your business mister." he said.

"A Mr. Johnson sent me. Said you could tell me something about the disappearance of his daughter."

"You McGee?" he asked.

"Guilty."

"Mr. Johnson told me to expect you. Common up and set a spell." he said, quieting the dogs with a hand gesture.

I got out of the car and walked up to the porch. The dogs followed and gave me a thorough sniffing, getting my scent in their memory banks. I'm not much of a dog person, but I got the feeling that one threatening move on my part would have resulted in the pack attempting to remove the meat from my bones.

"Them dogs won't hurt you long as you don't mess with me. I rescued all of them from the pound and I think they somehow know that I saved all of their lives. The Dobermans are especially mean. They were trained by some real ornery cuss to go for the crotch at the sight of a pistol. They've mellowed out some now, but I’d hate to be the hombre who pulls a gun in front of them." he said as he caressed his dogs and praised them for doing well. His left knee looked like something out of a Frankenstien movie, but

from what he said it was on the mend.

"It's the very latest artificial knee, compliments of Mr. Johnson. I played football in high school and college without blowing it out. Who would have guessed my luck would run out in New York City?"

"Do you mind talking about it?"

"Hell, no, it's all part of the story I guess. Mr. Johnson said to tell you everything."

"He told me you were the best man in Texas," I said, offering him a compliment.

"Well, that's mighty kind of Mr. Johnson to say that. To tell you the truth, I don't know of anyone in Texas who's better. In case you're wondering where he got your name, it was me who give it to him. There aren't all that many that play the game in our league and I'd heard of you by reputation. They say you're a man with sand in your craw Mcgee."

"Call me Travis," I said. Good old boys aren't my usual preference in companions, but this man was hard not to like.

"Travis it is. I take it you already know as much about this case as I did when I started. I come close Travis, but close don't feed the bulldog.

"I went up to New York City and posed as a horny old fart looking for real young girls. I started snooping around on the streets where the young ones hang out. I even had sex with some of those young girls to make them think I was just after young stuff. I finally got a lead on a place in a fancy apartment building up in Manhattan. I went up there and purposely didn't bring enough money with me. I got a look at some of the girls before they found that out and little Miraflor was one of them. I said I would get more money and come back. Instead, I went to see New York's finest.

"It only took them about twenty four hours to arrange a raid, but by the time we got back the whole operation was gone. I don't know how much notice they had but the whole place was squeaky clean by the time we got there."

"Do you think the vice squad was in on the operation?"

"I don't know who was feeding information to those scumbags. A big city police department is a major bureaucracy. It's hard to keep things secret. Hell, it didn't even have to be a cop. It could have been a civilian employee or even the cleaning lady. Who cares. We got there about as soon as we could and it still wasn't fast enough.”

"I started poking around on the street some more. I guess I pressed my luck a little too far. They set me up for it, even made me pay five hundred dollars for the information. I went into another fancy apartment looking for a kiddy crib and instead I met one of the baddest dudes it has ever been my misfortune to tangle asses with.”

"I can fight, Travis. I fought in the jungle in 'Nam. I wasn't one of them rear echelon house cats. I was out there with my ass in the grass for almost two years. Lots of good men died out there on both sides. It seemed like I had a guardian angel following me around, keeping me safe.”

"I was lucky to get out without a scratch after my first tour. I thought anybody who asked for a second tour in country had a screw loose. When I got back to the real world I couldn't stand it. I didn't fit in. It's hard to explain, but over there I was important. People's lives were in my hands. Back home at the time people would spit on you if you wore your uniform in public. I just couldn't sit back in the states, safe, while my brothers were dying in Viet Nam. I volunteered for a second tour and probably would have gone back again, but by then the deal was winding down and they didn't need me anymore.”

"After I came home the second time there was no war to go back to. I kind of drifted for a while, doing shit jobs and drinking up everything I made. I found there were a lot of other guys like me who had couldn't readjust to a peaceful world.”

"Then I inherited this land from my Grandfather. Ten thousand acres, more or less, of Texas hill country that aint worth a pitcher of warm spit unless you need a secure position. Some of those guys who couldn't come back for the war live here in the bush on my spread. I'm sort of their liaison officer with the real world and they are my full time security force. If you had tried to pull a weapon, Mr. McGee. I can guarantee you that you wouldn't be drawing breath right now.”

"I was going to hell in a hand basket for a while there until I happened into my present line of work. It's dangerous and it makes me feel important and it keeps me in corn flakes in between jobs."

He took a deep breath and got back to the matter at hand.

"Like I was saying, this dude I tangled with was bad. I would have expected to take a real beating from three or four guys, but there was just him, no gun or nothing. He had real fast hands and feet. He was about six two, maybe two hundred, two ten. Not muscle bound but all trim and coordinated and sleek. We commenced to tussle and I wasn't doing too bad until he destroyed my knee. One kick and he shattered my knee and bent it backwards the way a knee ain’t supposed to bend. Then my head exploded. The next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital a few days later.”

"If the place hadn't been for rent I might have died. The real estate agent was real upset about me bleeding all over the wall to wall carpet, but she had a cellular phone and called the police and an ambulance. I understand that she was amply rewarded by Mr. Johnson."

"Did you get the names of any of the people involved in the operation?"

"No. I remember the people at the first place, but I looked at mug books until my eyeballs damn near fell out but I couldn't spot them. These guys don't mix with your garden variety criminals. The only contact is through the pimps and hookers and you can see what that got me.”

"I do have something here that might interest you. I got this in the mail from a detective on the vice squad in New York. Some of those fellows are downright decent people."

"He handed me a manila envelope with a newspaper clipping inside. There was a picture of a rather conservative looking man with the headline, "Prominent Businessman Found Dead with Sex Slave in Private Dungeon". The article underneath basically expanded on the headline. There was a hand written note attached which read, "J.R., The woman in this case says she was sold out of one of the kiddy cribs when she got too old. She says she worked with Mira for a short time. Her name is April Donovan. She’s living up in Connecticut right now. Your can reach her at this number, 203-555-2727. Regards, Chad."

"I was going to follow up on this myself, but I guess that you better take it from here. Let me know if I can help in any way."

I used his phone to book a flight into the Hartford- Springfield airport. I shook J.R’s hand and headed for the Austin airport. I called Meyer from the airport and let him know where I was headed. I asked him to stay close to the phone and not to pick this time to loosen up one of his iron ladies. He promised and I got on a plane headed north. Things were about to get interesting.

Chapter 7

I wonder if there is a school where they teach airline stewardesses how to speak on a public address system. No matter which airline I fly on they all seem to have the same sort of rhythm and inflection to their speech. They seem to be trying to sound delighted about the emergency exits and the oxygen masks which will deploy in the event of "an unscheduled loss of air pressure in the cabin." In other words if the son of a bitch is about to tear itself to pieces in mid air. I try not to dwell on that when I fly. This time I had a new worry. What if I should have another heart attack in mid flight, hours from the nearest airport. I made sure that I had my little bottle of nitro pills and I couldn't stop myself from nervously checking my pulse every few minutes. There may have been other people on the flight who were happier to hear the wheels hit the runway, but I doubt it.

I rented a car at the Hartford-Springfield airport. It was a Chevy Cavalier, not much of a car but adequate for my needs. They say that this car is the most cost effective new car you can buy when you take into account all costs such as gas mileage, insurance and depreciation. Seeing as how the federal government allows the same mileage deduction for a Cavalier as a Lincoln town car, it makes good sense for the rental companies to stock them in their fleets. In all honesty, as I buzzed along the back country two lane blacktop through the piney woods of northwestern Connecticut, the drive was not unpleasant.

Most people who don't live there would be surprised to know that Connecticut is still over eighty percent woodland, most of it owned by the state. It doesn't take much driving to immerse yourself in the rural charm of the countryside. When I got into Salisbury, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a local street map. There weren't too many streets on it so it didn't take long to find the street where April Donovan lived. I drove to her street and soon located her house. It was a very impressive house for a seventeen year old. It was big and white with a long drive through a fine trimmed lawn and manicured shrubs. A tasteful white sign with black lettering proclaimed it to be Laughing Devil farms. I would have called first, but she might have told me not to come and that she didn't have anything to say to me. I wanted to be able to plead Miraflor's case in person if I had too. I got out of the car and was about to ring the doorbell when I was greeted by a couple of very large and very inquisitive dogs. One was a black lab that looked like a purebred, the other was a large yellow mongrel who may have had some German Shepherd in his genetic makeup.

The door opened a crack and I could see a young woman peering out at me.

"What can I do for you mister?", she asked.

She looked, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, like she was seventeen going on thirty five. Those eyes of hers had seen a lot of evil and had been affected by it.

"Are you April Donovan?" I asked.

"Who wants to know?" she replied.

"My name is Travis McGee. I'm a private investigator working on a missing persons case. I understand that you may have some information for me."

"Who are you looking for?", she asked.

I pulled the picture out of a folder I carried in my hands. "Miraflor Johnson," I said.

"Oh yeah. She was one of the girls the crib I worked in. I didn't know her very well. She showed up just about the time they sold me off. That was four or five months ago. I already told the police everything I knew. They raided the place where I worked but the scumbags were gone by the time they got there. I don't know what I can do for you," she said, returning the picture to me.

"There could be a substantial reward if you can help me find her. Her father is a very wealthy man," I said as earnestly as I could.

"I don't need money. The guy who bought me was very wealthy. His lawyers came up with five million tax free in an out of court settlement to keep me from suing his estate. I could have gotten more, but I didn't feel like hassling anymore. I just wanted to go someplace quiet and try to get my head on straight. Mona helped me to put most of the money into good mutual funds and the interest is enough for me to live fairly well," she said gesturing to the house and the grounds.

"Who is Mona?" I asked.

"Mona is my lover. My significant other. After what I've been through I don't know if I could ever have sex with a man again. I met Mona in the mental hospital. She worked as a nurse there and she got pissed off at the way I was being treated. They had me gooned out on heavy drugs while they drained off my money. She got a lawyer to spring me and got me straight. They fired her from the hospital so I got her to move up here with me. We became lovers after that. It was my idea, not hers Mr McGee. At any rate, I don't need your money Mr. McGee and I want to put the whole business behind me."

"When you were being held in New York, when you were still a young girl, did you ever dream about someone coming to save you? This girl is having those same dreams. We need your help. Besides, all I want to do is talk for a while."

I kept silent then. I knew that I couldn't say anything more. I had thrown my best pitch and it was up to her now. She bit her lip and looked at the ground, stifling some remembered pain.

"Yeah I had those dreams. I found out that my mother never even filed a missing persons report when I ran away. After I got the money she got religion and wanted to be the guardian of me and my money. I guess I kind of wigged out on her for a while. I had good reason. Her response was to get me put in a mental hospital while she had herself appointed trustee for my money. After Mona and the lawyer got me out I got a court order keeping her away and when she disregards it I set the dogs on her. I hope the bitch rots in hell, but yeah, I had those dreams. Oh, come on in. I guess I can talk a little but I don't know what good it can do."

We went into the front room of the house. It was large and spacious, made to hold a large family. It was sparsely furnished and the walls and ceiling were painted white which made the room seem even larger. She made coffee and I accepted a cup, black, no sugar.

"What would you like to ask about Mr. McGee?" she asked settling back with her cup.

"Why don't you just tell me your story while I take some notes. Try not to leave anything out, no matter how trivial it may seem. Right at the moment I'm grasping at straws and you can never tell what may be important"

She told her story then, in a flat, unemotional monotone which, I'm told, is typical of victims of systematic abuse and torture.

"I ran away from home when I was twelve years old. My mother had a live in boyfriend. When he first moved in I was ten and there was no problem, I even liked him then. After a couple of years my body started developing and he became interested in me sexually. He would accidentally walk in on me when I was taking a shower and he started groping me when my mother wasn't around. One day he got really bold and he held me down and took my pants off. He said he just wanted to look, but he did a very thorough examination as well.”

"When I told my mother she slapped my face and accused me of lying. She must have told him because the next time we were alone he made me take my clothes off. He just twisted my arm behind my back and kept hurting me until I did it. Then he tied my hands behind my back and whipped me with a switch until I almost passed out. He tried to rape me, but I was to tight for him to get it inside me. He made me go down on him then. I didn't know what to do but he used the switch on me when I wasn't doing something the way he wanted it. I learned.”

"That was bad enough but then he brought a friend of his over and made me do him too. That's when I ran away. I stole some money from his wallet and bought a bus ticket to New York. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there, but I just couldn't take it at home anymore. I was just hanging around the port authority and I met this nice lady. She said that she helped runaways. I went with her to this really nice house out on Long Island. For a while things went pretty well. I found out later that she was just keeping me happy while she found a buyer for me.

"I hadn't been there a week when two men came to get me. They didn't offer an explanation or try to fool me. They just put me in handcuffs and leg irons and gagged me. They tossed me in the back of a delivery van and drove me into the city. I was delivered through the freight elevator of a large apartment building to the crib. The girls there were kept under guard there twenty four hours a day. We were available to the clients all day every day.”

"There was this guy there who was responsible for training and discipline. His name was Jake. All the girls called him Jake the Snake behind his back because he was so mean. I already knew how to give head but I was still too tight to take a man inside me. He used lubricants and a series of hard rubber dildoes to stretch me out. He didn't care how much it hurt. I think he got off on inflicting pain on girls. We had to please the customers. They wanted all kinds of strange stuff. Some of them just wanted to look or touch. Some of them wanted to go down on you and some of them wanted to spank you. They didn't let the ones who wanted to hurt you get carried away because they didn't want damaged merchandise. The didn’t care how much you suffered as long as you weren’t permanently injured.”

"Most of the clients were businessmen. They charged a lot for a session and that kept out the low rent trade. If you didn't please the customer it would cost you a whipping. If you did they would give you a session with a vibrator. When they make you have that many orgasms you get fuzzy in the head. It makes you more complacent and easy to handle. The girls who didn't respond to the vibrator were put on heroin. If those girls didn't behave they withheld the drugs until they started to get sick. A little taste of withdrawal would bring them around in a hurry. I guess I was lucky that way. I wasn’t strung out on heroin.”

“I was there for a little over four years. They made me use hair remover on my crotch and my armpits so I could pass for a young girl. Then my tits got too big and my hips began to spread so I couldn’t pass for a twelve year old anymore.”

"That's when they sold me to this Mr. Brosnan. I didn't even know his name until after he died. He made me call him master. I was delivered to his house out in the suburbs. It was a real ritzy neighborhood and there weren't any other houses nearby. He had a dungeon all rigged up in the basement with racks and whipping posts. There was another girl when I first got there, but she was out of her head. She was covered with whip scars and burn marks. After he had me properly chained up he took her in the other room and had one last session with her. I heard her screaming for a while and then it suddenly stopped. He came to me all covered in blood and raped me. I never saw her again.”

"After that he started in on me. He would come a couple of times a week to play with me. He would leave me with food and water and a bucket for a toilet. I was chained around the neck so that I couldn't get to a door or a window. Even if I got off the chain it would have taken me a long time with no tools to get out of there. Then he decided that it was time to brand me. He chained me down on the floor so I couldn't move. Then he used a vibrator on me until I had an orgasm. He had some of those amyl nitrate capsules and just when I started to come he broke one under my nose. The feeling was so intense it made me scream. Then he heated up the branding iron with a propane torch until it glowed red. I begged him not to do it but I think the begging just made it better for him.”

"The brand was the face of a little devil with a smile on it's face. The pain was incredible. I passed out and when I came to he was on top of me. He had raped me several times before, but this time he was really

frantic. He had another one of those capsules and when he came he broke it under his own nose. He had a real long orgasm and that was what did him in. He had an aneurysm in his brain and it popped. He rolled off me and he was trying to get to the stairs. He knew something was wrong with him. Only his left arm was moving. He tried to get to the door, but he couldn’t move very well. He lost control completely and flopped around for a while, then he died. He let go of his bowels and bladder all over the floor.

"I laid down there with his stinking body for two days before they came looking for him. One of his underlings at work knew that he had this little retreat in the suburbs but he didn't know what went on there. He called the police when he found me there. He wanted to get me out of there before they came but he couldn't find the key to the locks on my chains in time.”

"They tell me that I'm rich now. They say that I'm set for life but I'll tell you this Mr. McGee, I wouldn't go through it all again for ten times the money. I don't know if you noticed the name of this place, Laughing Devil Farms? It's named after this". She pulled her blouse aside and showed me the brand on her left breast. It was the smiling face of a little devil.”

"You say most of the customers of this place where you worked were wealthy business men?" I asked.

"Yeah, they wore expensive suits and some of them would tell you how much they paid and that they intended to get their money's worth. Nobody who wasn't making a lot of money could afford it."

"Did the police help in identifying any of these men?"

"I looked at mug shots, but these guys aren't your run of the mill pedophiles. Most of them are probably just so jaded that they need to indulge themselves with young girls to get it up. A lot of them are reliving sexual experiences from their youth, maybe something they did with their little sister or a cousin or a neighbor's daughter. Some of them are doing things they thought about doing, but didn't dare to at the time. A place like the crib let them indulge their fantasies with out fear of being thrown in jail."

"If I can think of something else, would you mind talking to me again?", I asked.

"Mr. McGee, I can't think of anything else I could tell you, but you are the first person I have told this story to in complete detail. For some strange reason I feel better about it now than I did. Maybe just sharing it with you helped. I don't know. I trust you now as much as I can trust any man so, if you want to I'll talk to you again."

I took my leave of her then. I've seen a lot of evil in my time, but the people who did this, who enslaved and tortured young girls for profit, must have shriveled souls and hearts as black as coal.

Chapter 8

I checked into a small motel on the outskirts of town. This one was somewhat cleaner and more respectable than the motels one might find on the outskirts of Ft. Lauderdale, still I suspect it did it's share of short term rentals. I needed time to gather my thoughts. I was at kind of a dead end with this one. The only thing I could think of was to drive down to New York City and start poking around like J.R. had.

Fortunately I had the good sense to call Meyer and run the situation by him. I used the phone in my room to contact the long distance operator who dialed Meyer's number collect. I know there are ways to use calling cards and access numbers and all kinds of money saving plans, but I kind of miss the old days when the operator was there to place the call and ok the charges. There was a real human presence there to talk to and explain what was going on rather than a series of pre-recorded messages and menu selections for your touch tone phone. Meyer was not quite so nostalgic, but accepted my call with a minimum of grumbling.

"I'm at a dead end with this one Meyer. She could probably recognize some of her old customers, but she didn't see any in the police mug books of known sex offenders. She says that they were all high rent businessmen who were paying upwards of a thousand dollars a session. I don't know where to go with this one," I said letting Meyer hear the frustration in my voice.

"CD ROM," said Meyer.

"What?", I said.

"CD ROM. Compact Disc Read Only Memory. It sounds as though the leads you are looking for are to be found amongst New York's business elite. New York's business elite can be found on the pages of the business magazines. Business magazines offer their publications on compact disc for any subscriber who wishes to pay for it. Usually in six month chunks," he said matter of factly.

"Six months on one disc?" I asked incredulously.

"Trav, you can fit the entire encyclopedia Brittanica on a couple of compact discs. Six months of a single business publication would rattle around on a single compact disc. There are other advantages as well. I would assume that you are looking at pictures. With a CD read facility on a personal computer you can zoom in on pictures or even isolate a certain part of a particular picture. That way you can examine faces close up that might be just part of the background. You could probably find a PC with a CD reader and the discs you need at the library of a large college in Hartford or New York City. I would suggest that you do a little work on the telephone. If you talk to the head librarian at NYU and mention my name she would be happy to help you."

"Meyer, is she one of your...."

"Iron ladies. Yes. I humanized her just last year. She still hasn't forgotten her lessons and she is a rather a competent librarian. I think she'll be able to help you," Meyer said, rather smugly I thought.

I drove back to April's house the next morning with a new angle of attack. She was a little hesitant to go but Mona agreed to come with us, which reassured her. We all piled into the Cavalier and headed down the road to NYU. Mona didn't look like your classic dyke. She wore her hair shoulder length and was very feminine in appearance although she wore no makeup. The trip took several hours to complete and we engaged in some conversation along the way.

"Do you disapprove of my relationship with April, Mr. McGee?" she asked.

"Compared to what she's been through in the last four years you seem like a breath of fresh air to me," I said.

"Some people don't see it that way Mr. McGee. They seem to think that lesbians and gay people are the spawn of the devil."

"The way I understand it, people who are sexually attracted to members of the same sex really don't have much choice in the matter. I wouldn't think that someone who had a choice would choose to become a member of such an oppressed minority. Sort of like volunteering for a case of leprosy."

"You have a good attitude McGee. Usually hard bitten types like yourself aren't so understanding. I think I like you, even if you are a man." She said with a smile. "About the only real choice you have is whether to cower in the closet or try to live a somewhat normal life outside of it."

Mona had lived in New York for a while. She helped me navigate the matrix of toll roads and interchanges that led us to the city and NYU. By the time I located a parking lot in the proximity of the library I was more that happy to pay the usurious charge demanded by the attendant. I located the head librarian, a rather severe no nonsense woman in her early forties. When I mentioned Meyer's name she smiled and actually blushed a little. Someday I am going to have to find out exactly what it is Meyer does to these women. I explained to her exactly what our mission was and she supplied me with the most recent discs from six of the leading business publications and pointed me to a personal computer in a quiet alcove of the library. The woman also had a photographic memory and treated me to a recital of everything she knew about child prostitution.

"Child prostitution is a multi million maybe billion dollar a year industry world wide. It's estimated that there are over fifty thousand child prostitutes in the Philippines alone. Similar numbers exist in other Asian countries, especially in Thailand. There are organized sex tours for pedophiles from the United States, Japan and other industrialized countries. They go over there to indulge themselves in things that would have them thrown in prison in their own countries. Strangely enough, the people who are patronizing the young girls you are seeking, Mr. McGee, were probably recruited from the ranks of some of those overseas travelers. Someone who would pay that much to satisfy his sex drive would probably be making over half a million a year. Even in New York, that narrows it down considerably. I wish I could be of more help to you Mr. McGee but I am a busy woman. It is already highly irregular for me to allow the use of the facilities for a non student in the first place, but under the circumstances I will take the responsibility gladly."

With that she left me, April, Mona and the machine alone with six compact discs in plastic cases. I was lost. I am completely PC illiterate and I was about to appeal to one of the students in the room when I heard my name spoken.

"Travis? Travis McGee? How the hell did you find me. Especially after I asked you not to?", she asked, not looking at all happy to see me.

"Lizzy! What a pleasant surprise. I'm glad to see you to.", I said, mustering all the Irish charm at my disposal.

"Cut the crap, McGee. How did you find me?".

"Would you believe I wasn't looking for you. I'm here on business trying to locate someone. I came to this library to use the personal computer. Unfortunately, I know squat about computers. You wouldn't happen to know how to use one of these things would you?"

I explained the situation to her and introduced her to Mona and April. I explained their relationship. At last she relented, musing that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. She loaded up the disk and showed us how to use the mouse to point and click through the menu selections. It was disturbingly easy to catch on to. I felt the threat of nerdhood looming over my shoulder. We scanned swiftly through the pictures in each issue, stopping at each one and examining the faces in it. Most contained only a single picture but some were group shots. It was in a group shot of the board of directors of a large conglomerate where we struck paydirt. The faces were rather small but we zoomed in until they were large and grainy and filled most of the screen, one face at a time. The third face from the left was the one.

"That's him!" exclaimed April, "That's Charley the spanker!"

"Charley the spanker?" I asked.

"We had our own little names for the regular clients. Some of the names had to do with what they did for a living and some of them had to do with their sexual preferences. This guy never had regular sex with the girls. He tied them up and gave them a spanking. After that he would masturbate while he looked at their reddened buttocks. He was a regular, I think he spanked everyone there at least once."

There was a list of names of the board of directors. Most of them were initials with a last name. Only two started with the letter C. C. J. Parkinson and C. K. Schmidt. Lizzy left us briefly and came back with the full names and addresses of those two. Charles Johansen Parkinson and Calvin Konrad Schmidt. That left only one possibility. We were off on the hunt but before I left I took Lizzy aside to talk with her privately.

"So. How is my genetic contribution doing?" I asked.

"If you must know, Travis, it's been over a month since my last period. I think it must have taken," She said, daring me to pursue it further.

"I know you don't need child support, but if this case comes to a satisfactory conclusion I am going to come into a rather large sum of money. Would you allow me to endow the child's education? I probably won't be around to see the kid graduate, but it would make me feel better if you would allow me to do this for him."

"How do you know it's going to be a boy?" she asked.

She had me, caught in politicall incorrectness.. "Whatever sex the child may be, please let me do it".

"Allright, McGee. If it will ease your poor, battered, out of date, chauvinistic conscience, I will allow you to do it."

She gave me her card, which had her real name, address and telephone number on it. I decided to speak with a lawyer as soon as I got back to Florida. I had some new information now. A place to start, but I needed to regroup and think things over.

I could have gone to the police, but I remembered what had happened to J. R.. As I drove April and Mona back to Salisbury I turned the problem over and over in my mind. By the time we got there, I had the solution.

Chapter 9

My problem was this: If I called the police to sweat the information out of old Charlie the spanker, his lawyers would have him out and the people holding Miraflor would probably disappear before we could stage a rescue operation. In the old days I could have finessed the guy myself. These were not the old days and I was not the man I was twenty years ago. I may not be as strong and quick as I used to be, but I am definitely smarter and more resourceful.

I decided to call in a favor from a dead friend. Willy Nucci had numerous contacts with the less savory side of society. I had a brief, pleasurable liaison with the blond wench named Briney who was his nurse for the last few months of his life while the cancer and chemotherapy did what a life on the streets couldn't, namely kill him. I called her and asked if she could put me in touch with a man of respect in New York. Someone who could help in non traditional ways.

Briney called Willie's friend Stuff Greenberg. She explained the situation to him. Stuff told me to call on a guy named Big Mike Croft. He said I would know why they called him Big Mike when I met him. He said that Big Mike was the man for the job. He said that any of his guys would be available if we needed some extra muscle. Many of the men who worked for Stuff's organization had spent time in prison and no one despises a child molester more then a con. They are considered to be the bottom rung of prison society ranking below even ex cops. He told me to use his name when I asked Mike for assistance.

Big Mike, it seems, was a professional gambler and, of all things, a pimp. His little sister had been molested while Mike was a teenager. The molester had been arrested, but was able to post bail. He disappeared without a trace and Mike Croft, still in high school at the time, became a man of respect in Brooklyn. These days Mike ran his business out of a bar and grill in Brooklyn called, what else, Big Mikes.

It isn't much of a drive from Salisbury to the Big Apple. The drive isn’t the problem, it’s finding someplace to light when you get there that’s the problem. I parked the car at a commuter lot on the outskirts of the city and rode the train into town. I took a cab from grand central to Brooklyn. The driver was from Nigeria and spoke English of a sorts. It was difficult, but, through some miracle of non-verbal communication, managed to deliver me to Big Mike’s in a reasonable amount of time.

I walked into Mike's Place. One whiff of the air told of generations of spilled beer and tobacco smoke. The bar was polished but held the dents, scars and burn marks of millions of drinkers. The menu was written on a chalk board behind the bar. I always like a place with a menu written on a chalkboard. It usually means that the food hasn't been hanging around forever and that whoever is in charge of the kitchen takes a little pride in their cooking. The place was almost empty, just a couple of people taking a late lunch and a couple of patrons sitting at the bar smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and talking to the bartender. I got the bartender's attention and asked to see Mike Croft.

"Who wants to see him?", he asked.

"Tell him a Mr. McGee wishes to speak to him. I talked to him on the phone yesterday afternoon.", I replied.

"Wait here," he said, walking over to a door in the back of the room.

When he came back, it was apparent why they called him Big Mike. He was about six five but he was pushing three hundred fifty lbs. Some people might have thought that he was fat but it would have taken a brave man to say it to his face. His black hair was streaked with gray but his face was still unlined and young looking. His dark brown eyes were very clear and calm and radiated an intelligence unexpected in one of his size. He held out a huge paw for me to shake. I felt the power in his grip, but I got the feeling that he was holding back. I hate those idiots who engage in contests of grip strength every time they shake hands.

"Mr. McGee. Nice to meet you. Won't you step into my office?", he said gesturing me towards yet another door in the back of the room.

"I called Stuff last night after I talked to you. He said that you were a good man and that he would consider it a personal favor if I were to help you out. What exactly is it that you need?"

"I need your help in finding this little girl.” I said, showing him Mira’s picture.”She's being held by some people who specialize in procuring young girls for wealthy men. I have the name and address of a man who probably knows where she is, but I don't dare go to the police. The last man who tried that would up in the hospital and the bad guys got away."

"Mr. McGee, would you care to take a drop with me? This sounds like something that we should discuss as friends. I'm a scotch man myself," he said. He walked over to a small bar set in the corner of his office. It was small but stocked with nothing but top shelf stuff. I was pleased to see that he had Boodles and I asked for one on the rocks. He made the drinks swiftly and surely, his huge hands making the bottles and glasses look small.

"Mr. McGee, don't you think that's rather an odd favor to ask of a man who makes his living as a pimp?" he asked.

I must admit that I didn't have an answer. I needed his help and I didn't want to offend him. I didn't know what to say so I kept my mouth shut and just returned his gaze. I felt my pulse rate go up under the

power of those brown eyes. He finally broke the silence.

"Somebody must have told you about my little sister. Nobody is allowed to talk about that around here Mr. McGee. Nobody. The smartest thing you could have done was to keep your mouth shut. You might wonder how someone with my past could wind up earning money as a pimp. That's right I said 'earning' Mr. McGee. Hookers have to be the screwiest women on the face of the earth. A pimp has to keep several of them in line at one time. It's no day at the beach. Let me tell you how I became a pimp.”

“When I was a young man I was a smaller version of what you see here before you. I was great when I was busting heads on the football field, but none of the cheerleaders where interested in me. Every girl I dated went out with me because she was afraid I was going to kill her if she didn't. I finally got tired of it. I started going to prostitutes when I was still in my teens. They took care of my needs and they weren't afraid of me and they didn't laugh at me behind my back. I think they kind of liked me because I treated them like people. I never hassled them about the money or tried to cheat them.”

"I had one particular favorite. Her name was Suzie. She treated me good and she spent extra time with me without charging me for it. Her pimp didn't like that. He thought she liked me too much so he taught her a lesson. I went to visit her in the hospital. Besides the usual black eyes and broken ribs he had mutilated her vagina so that she wouldn't be able to have sex with anybody for months. After I left the hospital I paid him a little visit. I found the bar where he hung with his ladies and I goaded him into a fight. I could have killed him, but I didn’t. I decided that he would be more useful alive.”

"After I finished with him he was never able to have sex with a woman again. All of his girls left him. He lost everything he had. He's now one of those crazy mothers you see begging on the street. After Suzie got better she said she wanted to work for me. I said I wasn't interested, but she said that if it wasn't me it could be some other bastard, maybe worse than the last one, so I said yes. She insisted on giving me a cut of her earnings. Then some other girls who got tired of getting beaten up and ripped off came to me. Pretty soon I had five girls throwing money at me every night. Their pimps were pissed, but they didn't have the balls to mess with me after I did Suzie's pimp. Suzie taught me how to run the business, how to spot a girl who was holding out on the split. Most pimps beat the shit out of a woman for holding out. If a woman holds out on me I just let it be known that she's up for grabs and the other guys are happy to take her off my hands.”

"About that time I heard from the local family that controls that sort of business around here. Seeing as how all of the local pimps were scared of me, they put me in charge. So between that, the bar and my acumen as a bookmaker, I am a wealthy man. That may seem like an extremely long answer to your question Mr. McGee but, yes I will help you find this girl."

"Do you mind if I asked what ever happened to Suzie?"

"She died of cervical cancer. A very common disease to pros who live long enough. I gave her a great send off. Buried her out on the Island with the socialites. She would have loved it," he said, a bemused grin softening his bearlike face.

"Tell me Mr. McGee is her father an important man?"

"He's a rich and important man Mike".

"If we get his daughter for him, you tell him that he owes Mike Croft a favor. I may never ask him to repay that favor, but you tell him that he owes it to me regardless."

"I'm sure he would be willing to pay handsomely."

"No, Mr. McGee. I don't want his money. He may be able to do something for me one day which I am unable to do for myself, just as I am able to do something for him, a rich and powerful man, which he cannot do for himself. Do you understand how this works Mr. McGee. I do favors for people and people owe me favors. I may have to call in some of those favors to achieve this thing. Do you understand?"

"Yes I understand. Could I ask you for one small favor?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows in reply.

"Could you please call me Trav, Mr. McGee makes me feel old."

"Trav it is," he said, extending his hand. "Do you have a name, address and photo on this clown we want to grab?"

I handed him the photo of Charlie the spanker complete with his home address and his business address. Mike read the information swiftly and without, I noticed, moving his lips.

"This guy looks like one of those hypocritical cocksuckers who goes to church every Sunday to look down his nose at people like me and then puts money in my pocket every Friday night. You say he likes to spank little girls?" he asked.

"They don't call him Charlie the spanker for nothing," I replied.

"Perhaps we shall let the punishment fit the crime, Trav. This is going to take a day or two to set up. Would you be my guest for the next couple of days at my hacienda? I can see to it that you're made most comfortable."

I shrugged my shoulders and nodded my assent. At this point I was not about to offend him by refusing his hospitality.

He pushed a button on the intercom on his desk. A slim, dark skinned man who was of middle eastern extraction opened the door and looked in. "Have Luigi run this guy out to the beach house. Tell him that he is a special guest and to make him feel welcome."

I don't know why I expected a black Cadillac limousine but the plain white Chevrolet Caprice picked me and my luggage up at the curb was distinctly un-gangsterlike. When I mentioned this to Luigi he explained to me that that was the idea and that the Caprice was armor plated with bullet proof glass and had a built up 454 under the hood that was pushing 500 horsepower. It had an extra large oil cooler and was designed to run for a minimum of 50 miles at highway speeds without a single drop of coolant. My respect for Mike Croft grew just a little more.

Chapter 10

The beach house was on the windswept northern shore of Long Island. It wasn't jammed cheek by jowl with other beach houses. The zoning laws in the community where it was built had large minimum lot sizes. Also because Mike Croft bought up two building lots on either side of it. As a result the house perched in stretch of pristine Atlantic beach. There were healthy sand dunes between the house and the ocean crossed only by a wooden walkway, marred only by no trespassing signs. The locals soon realized that ignoring those signs would bring a quick confrontation with armed men and several curious Dobermans. Luigi introduced me to the men and the dogs.

“Once the dogs know your scent you can walk on the beach without getting eaten.” Luigi explained.

The house fit the beach nicely. It was a huge affair based on an A frame with a sweeping deck in front and a massive chimney thrusting up through the center of it. There was a glass wall that faced the ocean. I

figured that it was the product of lots of money and the skills of a talented architect. At this point I wasn't going to put anything beyond big Mike. Luigi brought my bag into the house and introduced me to Lilly. She wasn't exactly what I expected in a maid.

She was about five eight, blond in that elegant way that some women have. Her cheekbones weren't quite good enough for a fashion model but her eyes were clear blue lakes. Her mouth was made to be kissed and her body was both slim and voluptuous at the same time. The French have a word for it but then the French have a word for everything.

"Hello, Travis," she said extending a slim hand. My fingers felt stiff and clumsy as I returned her grasp. Mike called and asked me to come out here and look after you tonight. He'll be along in a few hours after he takes care of business. Won't you let me show you to your room?"

We walked up a spiral staircase in the back of the great front room with it's massive fireplace. Lilly led the way, I followed and Luigi brought up the rear with my luggage. There was a hallway leading back from the main landing and there were several large bedrooms on each side. Each room had it's own private bath and a well stocked wet bar. Lilly dismissed Luigi and he left without a word.

"Is there anything else I can do to make you comfortable," she asked.

The unspoken question must have shown in my eyes.

"Yes? Is there something you want?" she asked flashing me her two hundred watt smile and letting those blue eyes glint with mischief at my discomfort.

"Are you..," I started to ask.

"One of Mike's girls?" she finished for me.

"Yes I am Mr. McGee. I suppose I don't look like the kind of person who comes to mind in association with the word 'prostitute', but then there are different strata in the world of prostitution. The bottom level is the street walker. Those are the women who are too old or too young or too stupid or too greedy or some combination thereof to work in a massage parlor or as a call girl. Then you have the middle level, the massage parlor girls. They may work in lingerie modeling studios or encounter clubs or some other dodge, but it's all the same deal. Assembly line sex. It may be sordid, but it's clean and relatively safe. The top end is the call girl. There are some truly beautiful women working as call girls and it might surprise you who some of them are. Housewives, nurses, bank tellers even some business women. They get tired of giving it away to their bosses or even their husbands. They decide to use it to get themselves a little piece of the American pie.”

“When I started out with Mike I was working in a little massage parlor. Some gorilla pimp decided that I should work for him. He slapped me around some and threatened to leave my body in a dumpster if I didn't sign on with him. One of my girlfriends suggested that I talk to Mike. I went to see him in his office there at Big Mike's. He made me strip right there in the office in front of his buddies. I was humiliated at the time, but he saw the potential in me and he told me that he would take me on but that I had to do things his way.”

“He made me join a health club and lose thirty pounds. He sent me to a hairdresser and makeup artist who made me look more like a female executive than a hooker. He taught me how to run my business like a business and he taught me the most important thing that a top notch call girl can know, how to enjoy sex.”

“After he had me shaped up he started me out at one hundred and fifty and hour and every time my dance card was full, he upped the price. I don't work much now, especially since I passed the bar exam, but when I do it's only for all night and the price starts at two thousand. If you wonder how much I'm getting for tonight lets just say I'm doing Mike a favor. He told me about your mission. There’s no charge for my services to you or him."

She was wearing a clingy knit dress which displayed her body without fully revealing it. I was struggling to find the words to tell her that I wasn't really interested in commercial sex when she unzipped the back of her dress and slipped it off. All she wore underneath was a black g-string. She unhooked that as well and dropped it on top of the dress. She stood there in nothing but her black three inch heels, the kind with the decadent little ankle straps.

She was a living sculpture carved out of pale ivory tipped with pink and gold, lined with pink. She advanced on me and I backed away until my legs hit the bed behind me. She stopped with her nipples barely touching my chest her perfume was faint, but expensive and intoxicating. I could feel the female heat radiating from her body. I was still trying to think of something to say when I noticed that my heart was thumping away in my chest and I seem to have a hammer handle in my shorts.

"You don't seem the type who pays for it, Travis, but let me tell you something. Everyone pays for it one way or the other even if its not with money.", she said as she unbuttoned my shirt, "Besides, this is a freebie, remember?"

Her hands spread fire under my shirt and then undid my belt and scorched down to my throbbing member. I could see how someone with a lot of money could spend two thousand a night for her. Then she pulled my head down and drowned my senses with her kiss. I remember thinking what the hell as my scruples and my tarnished armor went clattering down the spiral staircase. She made love with an expertise that was almost perversion in itself, making sure she had experienced her own pleasure before she brought me climax. Afterwards she nestled beside me and draped her leg over mine so that she could keep her sex in contact with the hard muscle of my thigh. One hand traced lazy circles through the hair of my chest. I lay there panting as the overtaxed machinery cooled and slowed.

"Did I hear you mention something about the Bar Exam just before Mount St. Helens exploded?", I asked.

"Uh huh, a little over two years ago. I used some of the money I made to put myself through college and law school," she replied dreamily.

"Do you work as a lawyer now?"

"Yes. I have my own practice. I figured that too many of my former clients were lawyers and that it would be impossible to keep my past secret. I would either wind up getting fired or forced to put out for free. Thanks to Mike I have good connections. I do some criminal law and some business law. Mike is actually one of my best customers," she said.

"You mean bailing his hookers out of jail?" I asked.

She laughed a rich contralto laugh which broke over me in an unexpected wave of amusement. "Surely you don't think that Mike can afford a setup like this from the money he makes running a few girls and doing a little bookmaking?”

"Mike is one of the most knowledgeable investors in this city. It isn't just that he reads the papers and business and financial magazines, he also has one of the best sources of insider information in the city. He gets it from the high priced escorts who service the carnal needs of America's captains of industry. Most of them act like we don't have ears or brains.”

"We feed Mike little bits of information, most of them aren't worthy of basing a major investment on, but Mike has a head for these things that can't be explained. He sees these major scores coming weeks in advance. In return for feeding him information, he passes the scores along to his 'investment club', as he calls it. His only rule is that the members not get too greedy. Don't buy on margin. Don't try to make to much at one time and, above all, don't shoot your mouth off.”

"He uses a number of shell corporations and some offshore companies to dilute the impact of his buys. Not that he's doing anything illegal. He just doesn't want to attract the attention of anyone in an official position."

Mike Croft rose another notch in my esteem. There was a brain in that huge man that was infinitely more powerful than the body. This was not a person I would want for an enemy. All this time she had been softly stroking my chest and belly. Small tendrils of electricity began shooting down my torso and popping in my groin. My member began to rouse itself once more. I wasn't sure I was up to it but then she noticed and it was too late.

"Oh, are you going to make him hard for me again", she said running her hand down my thigh and gently cupping my testicles. "I love double headers, the second time always lasts so much longer. Don't worry, I'll do all the work. I wouldn't want you to have the big one on me."

She climbed on board and began to ride me expertly. She instructed me just to hold it up where she could get at it with her hungry little nether mouth. She kept up the ancient rhythm until her skin was glowing and shewas covered with a fine sheen of fragrant girl sweat. Finally she let go, making those little cawing sounds of female ecstasy as she had a long shuddering orgasm. She was right, it did last longer the second time. She managed to get off twice more as I held out. In the end I was forced to give up what little I had left. After I came she kept me inside her and I could feel her insides pop and quake as she got off one last time.

"We better go and grab a quick shower, Mike will be here in a while for dinner and one thing he does not forgive is being late for dinner."

I thought, with small satisfaction, that the man did have at least one fault.

Chapter 11

After we showered and dressed we went downstairs. She disappeared into the kitchen area and I stretched out on a luxurious sofa and fell asleep. I woke up to the sound of Big Mike making his entrance and delicious smells emanating from the kitchen.

"How's it going, Trav? Has Lilly been taking good care of you?", he asked.

"Oh, yes. Lilly has been taking very good care of me," I replied.

"The little minx probably fucked your brains out, didn't she?" he asked with a chuckle. I could only smile and shrug my shoulders.

"You don't seem the type for commercial sex, Trav, but Lilly is awfully hard to resist when the heat is on. Would you believe that when I met her she was twenty years old, getting laid five or six times a day and never had an orgasm. I taught her what it was all about. I think I created a monster. Did she tell you that she is also my lawyer? She doesn't need to turn tricks anymore, but she still does when she feels like it or if I ask her for a favor. She charges all outdoors for a night but if you've got enough cash I suppose she's worth it. She had one clown try to blackmail her. She made him pay double. She's got brass, that broad," he said smiling and shaking his head.

"She's one for the books, all right. They don't make many like that," I said shaking my head in agreement.

"Care for a drink?" he said, heading for the bar. I nodded my head in assent.

"Boodles?" he asked.

"That'll do fine."

"Everything is set up for tomorrow morning. Charlie takes a limo to the city from his house on the Island. We’ve arranged for his regular driver to be sick tomorrow so our man will be driving. We also rigged the limo so that once he's inside, he stays there till we let him out. We're going to take him to a warehouse where we won't be disturbed and sweat the location out of him, then we'll go and raid the place immediately. We don’t want to wait to long because when he's missed at work it could stir things up and tip the bastards off. We leave here at eight tomorrow morning so get some rest. I'll make sure that Lilly doesn't get at you again," he said with a chuckle.

I sipped the icy gin with appreciation and commented on the aromas coming from the kitchen.

"Lilly can burn, man. That's mostly what I wanted from her tonight, but I'm sure you didn't mind being used by her. She's doing something French with veal. I don't know what it is, I just love to eat it."

We dined in simple elegance at a table set with fine crystal, china and silver. The veal was exquisite and the wine complimented it perfectly. I consumed a healthy portion, Lilly ate a small serving with demure elegance and Mike inhaled about two thirds of the offering with great gusto. He washed it down with a bottle and a half of the wine. He was sweating freely and mopping his brow with a succession of linen napkins. We had a little sherbet for desert which Mike declined with a little joke about watching his weight. Then we retired to the conversation pit in front of the massive fireplace to sip cognac. We talked until after midnight and then we retired for the evening. As I lay there in bed just before sleep snatched me up, I could hear the unmistakable sound of Lilly hooting with pleasure coming faintly from the direction of Big Mikes bedroom.

It was about three hours later when I woke up with my heart doing the two step in my chest. I rolled over onto my back and it went back to a normal rhythm. Premature Ventricular contractions, the doctors say. Everybody has them, they say. Harmless, they say. Try telling that to someone who's been hooked up to machines in intensive care with a burning monster in his chest. I couldn't sleep. I just lay there feeling my heart beat. I got up and went downstairs and outside into the cool night air to listen to the soft roar of the surf. I was trying to relax enough to get a little more sleep. I felt thirsty and I went to the kitchen to get something to drink. I saw by the clock that it was a little after three am. I got a glass of cold water out of the refrigerator and went back out on the deck. The moon was almost full and it bathed the beach and the dunes with ghostly light. There was no color, just various shades of silver, grey and black. I had been out there for about five minutes when I saw someone coming over the boardwalk from the beach. It was Lilly. She was wet and nude and beautiful in the moonlight. Her hair was silver. Her skin was like marble, nipples just dark spots on her breasts.

"Well, you caught me Travis. Indulging in my secret satanic rituals," she said, gasping with exertion and cold.

"Chilly night for a swim."

"Yes, but that's what I like about it. It's soul cleansing to swim in that cold clean salt water and then run back to warm myself in front of the fire. Sort of like the guy who hit himself in the head with a hammer because it felt so good when it stopped hurting," she said, heading for the door.

I followed her in and helped her dry her shivering body in front of the fire. Despite her Viking beauty and her golden hair disheveled and her skin glowing from the cold water and the heat of the fire, I wasn't feeling in the least like sexual gymnastics. Fortunately for me, she wasn't either.

"So what brings you out here at three am, Travis? Couldn't sleep?" she asked.

"Bingo,", I said, "My heart was doing a little jig in my chest and I got a bad case of the wee hours worries. I just came out here to listen to the surf and calm down."

"You have a heart problem, Trav?" she asked with some concern in her voice.

"I had a heart attack a few months back that probably would have killed me if Meyer hadn't hustled me into the hospital before I knew I needed to go. They tell me that my heart is running on one main coronary artery right now. I'm supposed to get a quadruple bypass after I finish this case. I haven't had any symptoms since then but the worries are still there."

"Do you have a will, Trav?"

"Yes I do, but some things have changed recently. It needs updating."

"Sometimes when you're facing the impermanence of life, a will can give you a feeling of being in control. Sort of confronting the beast, as it were. It will also help to save any friends or family you might have a lot of hassles, not to mention money, if you kick the bucket. If you die intestate the whole shooting match has to go through probate and the lawyers will get a big chunk of whatever you leave. If you’re worried we could whip up a new one right now and cover those new circumstances," she said.

I agreed and she produced a laptop computer. She had a skeleton of a standard will which she brought up on the screen. She plugged in all of the standard information in the appropriate spots and then began to question me about what assets I had and which ones I would like to leave to whom. I started thinking about my life in terms of assets and I guess I must have looked rather glum.

"What'sa matter McGee? You look kind of down. Cheer up, how many people have their wills drawn up by a nude female lawyer?", she chided good naturedly.

The absurdity of the situation struck my and I smiled. She smiled in return and we got down to business.

"So, what have you got, Travis?", she asked to start the ball rolling.

"Well, I don't have a lot of cash, at least not right off. If I make this recovery I stand to get ten million. If not, I have a few thousand in my money stash on the Flush.", I said.

"The Flush?", she asked.

"My boat and principal residence. The full name is 'The Busted Flush', so named because I won her in a poker game from a Latin American Playboy. I hate to think how many years ago.".

"So is this a real sporty luxury yacht?", she asked.

"Thirty years ago it was state of the art, now I suppose one would characterize it as funky. The Flush has got some charm. She’s big and solid and seaworthy, but the years have passed her by somewhat. I'm pretty attached to her. When I was lying in the hospital with tubes and wires hanging out of and off of me, all I wanted was to crawl back to the Flush and go to sleep in her big comfy bunk. I knew that if I could just make it home everything would be all right," I said, feeling a swell of affection for the old tub.

"So, in the event that you shuffle of this mortal coil, who would you like to come into possession of said funky old boat?", she asked getting back to business.

"Meyer, my friend Meyer. Of course he'll probably change her name to something having to do with an obscure economist but, what the hell. He deserves her for putting up with my escapades for all these years. He damn near bought the ranch a time or two himself. You know that for years he lived aboard a boat he called the John Maynard Keens?"

"You mean the father of modern economics?" she asked.

"One and the same. Meyer would be impressed that you knew."

I gave her Meyer's full name and address and then we proceeded to divvy up any money I might have at the time of my death on a percentage basis. I left some for the education of my unborn child. I left some other small chunks to some Florida based environmental groups. I split the rest between Meyer and my daughter. She said that she would do some digging to get the proper titles and addresses included and then have some documents for me to sign before I left New York. By the time we finished it was after five and the sun was peeking over the ocean, flooding the beach house with lurid orange red light. She stood up and stretched her back, her skin was tawny in the glowing morning light. She walked over to the couch where I was sitting and dropped herself unceremoniously into my lap.

"Let's discuss my fee, McGee.", she said kissing me and pulling my head down so that she could feel my beard scratch against the soft skin of her breasts. "I want a nice back rub. And, providing you can get it up, I want to use your body for my pleasure for a half an hour or so, and next winter, when it's cold and grey up here, I want to come down to Florida so you can take me out on your funky old boat. Someplace where I can swim naked with the dolphins and ruin my skin on a white sand beach."

"In the old days I would have picked you up and carried you into the bedroom. If you want me to have sex with you now, you're going to have to walk."

She got up and led me, her willing victim, to the bedroom for another session. When we finished, I drifted of to sleep feeling sated and peaceful. Maybe the will was a good idea after all.

Chapter 12

The smell of coffee brewing commingled with the aromas of frying bacon and hot bread woke me up. The sun was well up now. It was already 7:30 am. I grabbed a quick shower and dressed in some comfortable jeans and a sweatshirt. I didn't figure I had to impress anyone with my sartorial splendor. When I got downstairs to the kitchen breakfast was just being served.

"Eat up, Travis," said big Mike over a mouthful of eggs and toast, "You're gonna need it. We may have to knock some heads today. I would assume that someone with your rep aint gonna get squeamish or have qualms about the legality of what we're doing."

I assured him that I wasn't squeamish and had no such qualms when it came to child molesters. Then I proceeded to stuff myself with all kinds of things that I shouldn't be eating. I justified it to myself on the grounds that nobody lives forever and besides that I needed my strength today.

"As soon as we finish here we're going to head down to the city and have a little conversation with Mr. Charlie. As soon as he spills the beans were going to make the raid. No more than an hour later. We don't want any leaks and who knows who’s mixed up in this thing. If there's a lot of money in it, I wouldn't put it past some of the wise guys in this town to jump in. You know how to handle one of these?", he asked, laying two silenced pistols on the table.

One of them was a nine millimeter Ruger automatic, the other a .38 caliber Colt revolver. I chose the colt.

"You know the auto has more rounds and it hits harder," cautioned Mike.

"To quote Eubie Blake," I said,"one of my favorite musicians and philosophers, never trust a restaurant named mom's, a whore named Rosie or your life to an automatic weapon."

"I'll have to remember that," said Mike, chuckling as he took the automatic and put it in his briefcase, "especially if the son of a bitch ever jams when I need it."

The driver was there with Mike's limo and we all piled in for the drive to the city. We dropped Lilly near her office building in Manhattan and then proceeded to a warehouse down near the docks. There wasn't much activity around the area and the warehouse had thick stone walls. Whatever sounds made inside the building were unlikely to be heard by anyone on the street. Charlie was already there, having arrived in his own specially rigged limo a few minutes earlier. He was still sitting in the back seat and banging on the window. Big Mike had two of his cronies open Charlie's door. As he got out he was seized by two very large men with extremely strong hands. When they gripped his arms he yelped in pain. They frog marched him over to where Mike was standing. In front of him was a sturdy metal chair with a light suspended above it from the ceiling. The floor was made of thick wooden planks and was covered with a layer of dust which suggested that nobody had been there for a long time. Charlie was made to stand at attention in front of Big Mike.

"I don't know what you guys are pulling here but I'm not saying anything without my lawyer. I happen to know people with influence in this city so I would suggest that you let me go before I have you all of your badges."

Charlie still didn't get the picture. Big Mike filled him in. Some men, especially big men, push with their punches. They may be powerful, but they don't get the necessary snap on a punch to inflict real damage. This was not the case with Big Mike. He snapped a perfect uppercut into Charlie's solar plexus before Charlie knew it was coming. Even a trained professional boxer has trouble taking a punch like that unless he has tightened his abdominal muscles. Charlie was out of shape and caught off guard. He collapsed in a limp puddle on the floor.

"Just exactly what is it that makes you think were from the police, asshole?"

Not waiting for the reply which Charlie was quite incapable of making anyhow, Mike instructed his men to strip Charlie and tape him to the chair. By the time Charlie was capable of coherent speech again, he was bound helpless and naked to the metal chair.

"What do you want?" were the first words he was able to gasp.

"We want to know the whereabouts of this girl," said Big Mike holding Miraflor's picture in front of him.

"I've never seen her before," he said nervously.

He wasn't a skilled liar. He had gotten out of practice by letting his lawyers do his lying for him. His reply was followed a split second later by a huge right hand slapping his face. This was not a love tap. This was the kind of slap that left your ears ringing and a small galaxy of stars wheeling in your field of vision.

"Look, I can't tell you. They'll kill me. They killed some other guy who got religion and turned them in." Charlie blubbered, caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

"Just exactly what is it that makes you think I won't? Those other people are your problem. I'll let you deal with them later. Right now you're going to tell me everything you know or I'm going to make you hurt so bad you're going to beg for a bullet to make it stop. Capish?" Mike said, very calmly. The sort of calm one finds in the eye of a hurricane.

Charlie still refused to give up the information. Whoever was running the operation that held Miraflor had put the fear of the lord into him. He wasn't willing to give them up. Big Mike taped Charlie's mouth so that he couldn't scream. Then he opened his brief case. I thought he was getting his gun, but instead he produced one of those long barreled butane lighters people use to light their barbecues and fireplaces. He adjusted the flame to its highest level and then proceeded to roast Charlie's genitals. He didn't do too much real damage but he burned off most of Charlie's pubic hair and let him feel the heat on the head of his penis. Charlie screamed behind the tape and rolled his eyes wildly trying to beg for mercy. Big Mike stopped and ripped the tape from Charlie's mouth. The acrid smell of burnt hair filled the air.

"You ready to talk know, big man?" asked Mike," or shall we continue the weenie roast?"

"All right, I'll tell you, just don't burn me anymore"

I noticed that Charlie had some rapidly filling blisters on the head of his penis. I shuddered inwardly, somewhat more squeamish than I thought I was.

"All right, Charlie me boy, you got one chance to do this right. If everything's where you say it is and the setup is like you say it is, I'll let you walk. By the way, if you should get any foolish notions about going to the police, I should tell you that you were fingered by one of the little girls you used to spank. If you don't keep your mouth shut you'll be doing ten years hard time in a place where they take a dim view of child molesters. You understand?”

“Know this too, if you don't give us the straight dope I'm gonna give you a Sicilian vasectomy. You know what that is? I'm gonna take the blade from an ice pick and run it through your balls, then I'm gonna hammer it into this floor so deep you can't pull it out with your fingers and I'm gonna leave you here with a straight razor. I'll make sure nobody comes near here for a month. The only way you’ll walk out of here alive is if you cut your own nuts off. You got that Charlie? Do you think I'm kidding?"

Mike held up the wickedly sharp steel blade of an ice pick which had no handle, just a widening of the shaft to anchor it in the missing wooden

handle. It would be impossible to slip a skewered testicle over the wide spot, but the shaft wasn’t wide enough for even the strongest fingers to grip. Charlie sat there with his blistered genitals and cried like a baby. He swore that he would tell the truth.

Big Mike got out a legal pad and began writing down the answers to the questions he kept firing at Charlie. He wanted more than the address. He wanted to know how the operation ran. Was the doorman in on it? Was the concierge? Was there anyone working the door? Did they have any security set up? Charlie answered all of the questions. Mike asked for a volunteer to come back and give Charlie his vasectomy if things weren't exactly like he said. Everyone volunteered. In the end Big Mike had to choose.

There were eight of us in the war party. Big Mike used the information from Charlie to formulate a plan of action right on the spot. I was impressed not only by it's rapidity, but also by its completeness and attention to detail. We left Charlie alone to sweat and set off on our adventure.

One man was dropped off to keep the doorman company, one stayed with the desk clerk. The lobby of this hotel was posh and elegant. This was no back alley operation. We got on the elevator and went to the floor where the crib was. One of the more conservatively dressed men rang the doorbell and waited for admittance. When the door opened the rest of us poured in with guns drawn. The two door guards were quickly relieved of their armament and held at gun point. Big Mike and I came in last. He was acquainted with the two men guarding the door.

"Carmine, does your boss know that you're working this gig?" asked Big Mike, somewhat sorrowfully.

"Yeah, Mike, honest, everything's cool. We got his permission."

"Of course, you won't mind if I check," said Mike, picking up the phone and beginning to dial, "cause I find this somewhat hard to swallow myself."

"No, no Mike please. You'll get me killed. All right, he don't know. Please Mike, cut me some slack!"

"All right, Carmine. I'll cut you some slack this time, but you better come clean with your boss or get away somewhere because this shit is going to be on the street shortly, capish? If your boss finds out before you tell him you can kiss your ass goodbye. Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind. But first unlock the door."

Carmine unlocked the door and we all entered and proceeded down a long hallway, guns drawn, safeties off. There was a door on the right from which I heard muffled screaming. I indicated to Mike that I would take this one. I tried the handle. It wasn't locked. I pushed it open and followed the barrel of the gun into the room. This must be the room where discipline was administered. The walls were lined with cork to deaden the sound and there were various pieces of equipment designed for the restraint and torture of young girls. On a black leather dais, which resembled a massage table, the nude body of a

young girl was bound tightly to steel rings on the corners of the bench. There was a small black dildo protruding from her pubic mound and her torso from mid thigh to her budding breasts was criss crossed with thin red welts. She was screaming with pain and begging for mercy while a man beat her with a thin whip. The man was also nude and had a large erection. She was making so much noise that he didn't hear me come in. I had a bead on him before I spoke. I told him to drop the whip and get up against the wall. My hand was shaking but I had him covered. He dropped the whip but instead of getting up against the wall he picked up a wickedly sharp knife and proceeded towards me.

He had the cold empty eyes of a shark. I knew that if I didn't shoot him he would gut me within a matter of seconds.

A silenced pistol isn't really silent. The ear shattering blast is gone but the zip of the bullet through the air and the sick wet thunk it makes when impacting on human flesh and bone are still audible. I aimed my shaking gun at his midsection and squeezed the trigger. The bullet tore through his shoulder and hit the

wall behind him. He grunted with the impact and ejaculated into the air. Then he came at me again.

Again I aimed for his midsection and fired. This time the slug punched through his forehead, leaving a neat black hole between his eyes and splattered blood, bone and brain all over the room behind him. He gave one last convulsive jerk and collapsed on the floor in front of me.

The girl on the table lost it at that point and began shrieking mindlessly. My legs felt like they were made of jello. I backed out of the room and went down the hall to where Mike and the others had gone.

As I entered the room I saw seven or eight young girls and one woman who appeared to be in her mid thirties. The woman was evidently in charge of the operation. Mike looked at me and shook his big head sadly. "She's not here McGee. One of the other girls told me they took her away the day before yesterday and this bitch here says she aint gonna tell us anything.". He smiled a wolfish smile told me that she was going to tell us everything she knew. "Take her down the hall boys, we'll question her there."

They led the woman forcibly down the hall to the room where I had shot the sadist. The girl on the table was still in hysterics. One of Mike's boys untied her and brought her back to where the other girls were. They wrapped her in a blanket and tried to comfort her. Her hysterics calmed to a muted whining.

I stayed with the girls while Mike attended to his business with the woman. I have killed men and even women when I absolutely had to and I had watched Charlie the spanker get his genitals toasted without a qualm but there is something about the torture of a woman that I just can't abide. I knew I couldn't interfere but I couldn't watch either. I just stayed where I was and felt bad for her. It didn't take long.

Mike was back in less than five minutes with the information we needed. He said that we needed to clean up the mess here and head back to his place on Long Island to plot our next move.

He made two phone calls and within half an hour a Catholic Priest and a couple of Nuns showed up and took charge of the girls. Two other men showed up and took charge of removing the dead body and cleaning up the mess. We left and headed back to Big Mike’s lair on the beach.

Chapter 13

We arrived back at the beach house within the hour and Big Mike laid out the information. The girl had been sold to a flesh peddler who was going to transport her to the middle east where a wealthy pedophile was going to add her to his stable of young white slaves. Plan "A" was that they would make some money on her and never have to worry about her father making more trouble for them.

"Listen, Trav. This woman didn't want to give up this dude. I think he may be more than just a middleman. There's somebody behind this whole racket. Somebody who sets up the tours and the cribs, somebody who launders the money and handles the payoffs. She didn't know his whole name, says everybody in the business just knows him as Alexi. I'm going to see if I can dig up any more info on this guy. Care to join me?" Big Mike said.

"Where are we going?", I asked.

"Into my office," Big Mike said, excusing himself and leading me back to his private office. He left instructions that we not be disturbed.

He closed and locked the door to his office and sat down at his desk and switched on his PC. He fiddled for a few seconds using his mouse, pointing and clicking and I heard the sound of a phone number being dialed and then the lonely mating call of a modem. The connection was made and then he spoke to me again.

"McGee, what you are about to see here goes with you to your grave. I've got a connection to a National Security data base here that I'm not supposed to have. If I get popped with it they might put my butt in jail. I get an update on the password from one of my girls. She's fucking this clown from the government and she pretends to get sexually aroused by poking around in these files. What she's really up to is picking off his password."

He entered a series of keywords for the program to search on which included "Alexi", "pedophile", "prostitution" and "sex". He hit the enter key and sat back to wait while the big mainframes scoured their files looking for combinations that fit the profile. It took about five minutes for the information to be formatted and returned to the PC. There was a list of files to chose from, rated by the machine in their order of probable importance. One indicated that it was a photograph. Mike clicked on it and a second later a digital representation of an old photograph appeared on the screen.

The picture was a military ID photo. The face in the picture was tanned and fit. It was an ID from the French foreign legion. There was a small block of text in the bottom right hand corner of the screen it read: "Alexander Romanoff, AKA Alexi, AKA Sascha. Claimed to be a Soviet from Georgia when he joined the legion, but is believed to be of other Eastern European extraction. This name is false and his birth name and country of origin are unknown. Although no current picture is available he is now said to be wearing a full beard to hide scars received in combat while in the legion."

Mike downloaded that picture to a file where he said he could enhance the picture. Within a minute or two he had transformed the screen image to a photo of a bearded man. He made a print of the picture on his laser printer. Then he went back and selected the file designated as the next most important.

This one said it was top secret CIA. I wondered if the CIA knew they were sharing their top secret files with the NSA, let alone a pimp from New York. This file read as follows: Subject Alexander Romanoff (not real name), AKA Alexi, AKA Sascha, is a deserter from the French Foreign legion. Subject was an expert on explosives and hand to hand combat and was considered black belt level in several of the martial arts. Subject left the Legion to avoid charges of raping his commandant's twelve year old daughter. Subject worked briefly as a mercenary in different parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. He also was involved in selling and smuggling arms. Currently believed to be one of the major players in the international sex and white slavery business, specializing in setting up sex tours for wealthy pedophiles from the United States, western Europe and Australia. He is also believed to have organized several brothels exclusively for the use of pedophiles. Subject has a taste for sadistic sex with young girls.

Identifying marks: Subject has a tattoo of a death's head wearing a legionnaire's hat on his right bicep. He has numerous facial scars received in combat and hides them behind a full beard. He is also rumored to have an unusually large penis.

This man is extremely dangerous and should be considered armed at all times. He is wanted by the French on desertion charges. He is wanted for questioning by several other foreign governments and agencies. Other than the French there are no active warrants for his arrest."

"Well McGee. You've got yourself a live one here. That woman at the crib did not want to give him up. It took some convincing before she decided that it was better to be afraid of us than to be afraid of him.

She gave us the address of a place down in Rhode Island near the Connecticut border where they took the girl. She'll be shipped out in a day or two on a big yacht this guy Alexi travels around on, called the Beau Soleil. Said it had two masts and was around a hundred feet or so."

"Trav, I don't know from boats. I've been on a cruise or two but that's about it. I understand you live on a boat down in Fort Lauderdale, maybe you should take the lead on this one.".

"Sounds like a big ketch or a yawl to me," I said.

"What's the diff?" Mike asked.

"The positioning of the wheel. A ketch has the wheel in front of the rear mast, the yawl has it behind."

Mike rolled his eyes as if to ask who cared where the wheel was.

"Did she know the name of the marina where the boat was docked?" I asked.

"She said that the boat wasn't docked, it was anchored out or tied to a mooring."

"That should narrow it down some. We know the name of the boat and we have a general description. There can't be that many marinas in Mystic where you can anchor a seagoing yacht. I think we should get down there as soon as possible even if they aren't there anymore we should be able to pick up the trail before it gets too cold. How about the address of the place she said the girl was dropped off?".

Mike logged off of the NSA system and dropped a silvery disk into the multimedia player. He brought up a road atlas application. He started with a map of the United states and zeroed in on first Rhode Island and then the town and then the street. When he had the street dialed in he highlighted a section of street numbers and cross streets and then printed off the map on his laser jet. Next he went into a real estate broker’s application which listed the name of the man who owned the property at that address, it's acreage, size and type of house, the yearly earnings and current net worth of the occupants. He ran a credit report against the man using a special code he said would not show up as an inquiry on the man's record.

"We're dealing with a heavy hitter here, Trav. This guy may be a pervert but he's a very rich pervert. He has a fenced thirty acre estate with security on premises at all times. I don't think I’ve got enough muscle to handle this one and the chances of getting a search warrant are real slim."

"Let's get down there and scope out the situation. Sometimes in situations like that one man is more effective than a company. If I can't penetrate the grounds on foot then we can try to take them when they make the transfer to the boat, but either way, we need to get down there fast."

"I think I need to call in one of my favors." said Mike. "there's a pilot with a small plane not far from here I rescued from the loan sharks a few years back. I paid off his principal and I put him on the hook for a favor in place of the vig. He owes me one."

Mike made the phone call and within an hour we were on the tarmac of a small airport talking to the pilot who acted like he was about to pee his knickers over the prospect of paying off his debt to Big Mike.

"Relax, Jim. We ain't doing nothing illegal here we just need to get to the Mystic airport, toote suite. Understand? You won't lose your life or your license here we just need to move fast, Capish?"

Jim nodded that he understood and seemed to calm down somewhat which put my mind at ease. I didn't relish the thought of flying in a small plane with a nervous pilot. We got into a well kept Cessna 180 while Jim did a quick pre flight inspection. Between the pilot, Big Mike, Me and one of mikes soldiers, not to mention full wing tanks, I was sure we were over gross. The Cessna seemed to take little notice and soared skyward after a short rollout. We climbed to about ten thousand feet and buzzed along down Long Island sound towards Mystic. When we got there Mike had the pilot fly around the harbor a couple of times so that we could take note of the areas where there were large numbers of boats on moorings. We landed at a small airport near Mystic late in the afternoon. It wasn't a controlled airport. We flew the pattern and plunked down to a soft, greasy landing. We called a rental car company for transportation and left the

pilot at the airport to wait for us.

We purchased a street map of Mystic at the first convenience store we came across and started visiting the Marinas looking for the Beau Soleil. We struck pay dirt on the third marina we checked. She was sitting out there on a mooring looking fat and rich. There appeared to be someone on board, but the boat was not ready for sea. All of her sail covers were in place and all of her lines were neatly coiled. The man on board was busy oiling the teak around the cockpit. We decided to leave the boat and drive to the estate in Rhode Island. Fools, as they say, rush in where angels fear to tread.

Chapter 14

Locating the estate was not difficult. It was in an area of large estates on the South side of town. We had gone to the city clerks office and obtained an aerial photograph of the estate and an architectural rendering of of the main house. Civil servants can be very useful if you know how to ask the right questions. We posed as agents for a rich middle easterner who was considering purchasing the estate and we were accepted as such without question.

We decided to cruise the estate while there was still daylight. It was bordered on two sides by two lane asphalt roads. The other sides adjoined other large estates. The whole thing was bordered by an eight foot high brick wall. There was embedded glass in the top but no barbed wire. Barbed wire was considered tacky in that neighborhood. I didn't see any signs of electronic security, but figured that there would be video cameras at least watching the main gate. When we drove by the gate we saw a uniformed guard on duty. There were also several large Dobermans lounging around, watching the traffic pass. The dogs evidently had the run of the place.

Dobermans make excellent guard dogs. They aren't used as attack dogs because they don't take well to assaulting strangers who are not threatening their handlers. When on their own territory or in the company of a family member, they will tenaciously defend said territory or family member with their last drop of blood. The Doberman will decide who the members of it's family are. Those members may include even the cats living in the house and may exclude parents who spend too much time away. This can make for awkward situations where disciplining children is concerned. I didn't have any warm fuzzy feelings about having to deal with a pack of them.

We found one area of the estate where there was a grove of old oak trees adjacent to the wall. I thought I could get across the wall there without being observed. At that point I could try to get into the house unobserved and see if I could find the girl. They wouldn't be expecting me and, as the saying goes, luck favors the bold. We decided to retreat and wait for nightfall.

We found a motel room down near the beach in a place called Misquamicut. It sounded like an Indian place name taken from a tribe which had the honor of being one of the first to have it's land stolen by the white man. Although some of their genetic material still existed in the population, most of those who carried it would have been surprised to find that out.

The motel wasn't much. Down in Florida it would have clung to existence by renting to the transients who come looking for a new chance in paradise. Here it commanded top dollar because of it's proximity to the beach. We moved in and shelled out over a hundred dollars for a single night. We ate in a decent little seafood joint and had a couple of drinks waiting for nightfall. The moon rose in the east, bloody and malevolent just after it cleared the horizon, but gradually brightening as it climbed higher in the night sky. We went back to the motel to try for a little rest and left a wake up call for the wee small hours of the morning.

I didn't remember feeling sleepy, but the two am call woke me up. I felt groggy and stale so I started doing a series of bending and stretching and breathing exercises which made me loose, limber and awake. Big Mike looked at me like I was crazy and went into the bathroom to splash cold water in his face.

We got into the car and drove back to the estate. We parked along the side of the road a quarter of a mile from where the grove neared the wall. I didn't bother with a black ski mask or any of that stuff. I just made sure that my running shoes were securely laced and I tucked the Colt revolver into my pants pocket making sure that the safety was on before I did so.

"You know Trav, we could wait and hit them when they make the switch to the boat. We don't have to try here." Big Mike said, having second thoughts about the success of the mission.

"Yeah, we could.", I replied, "but if we miss here we can try again at the boat. If we skip this opportunity and miss at the boat, we might not get another chance."

"It's your ass McGee. We'll wait here for you until you get back. Good luck."

I walked down the road to where the trees grew thick near the wall. I stopped and listened for a while to see if my passing had triggered any unseen alarms. Hearing nothing I took a short run at the wall and used my momentum to propel myself up the wall to where I could secure a grip with my fingers. I chinned myself up and checked for broken glass or other sharp obstacles. I found nothing. I swung my right leg up and pulled myself up until I was straddling the wall. From there I could clearly see the main house and part of the trimmed lawn in front of it. I didn't think any of the guards, even if they chanced to look my way, would be able to make out my shape amongst the branches of the Oaks. I swung both legs over the wall and let myself down on the other side with my arms. I let go and dropped the last foot or so, landing with my knees flexed to handle any unexpected obstacles. I landed easily on clear ground. The oak grove had been manicured. No leaves, no brush no dead trees or downed branches. I let my eyes adjust to the gloom, broken here and there by shafts of moonlight. I proceeded through the grove towards the main house.

I waited at the edge of the grove for a few minutes, looking for signs of life in the house. Seeing none, I took out the revolver and flipped the safety off. I walked steadily and silently across the lawn towards the

delivery entrance to the kitchen. Evidently the owner had great faith in his security system because the door was not locked. I eased through the door, letting the gun precede me. There was a light left burning in the kitchen but no sign of life. I was headed for the guest quarters on the second floor. To do that I had to traverse the formal dining room and the living room to the main staircase. I went stealthily into the dining room and checked it out. It was a large room with a high ceiling supported by exposed trusses of some kind of tropical hardwood. There was a long table with ten chairs on each side of it and then an open expanse if front of a large fireplace. I had just made it by the end of the table when the door to the living room opened and the lights came on.

A man with a pistol in his hand entered the room. He was wearing white canvas trousers. He was barefoot and was not wearing a shirt. I could see the death's head tattoo on his right arm and he had the beard described in the dossier. He was older and a little harder than the man in the photo, but there was no doubt in my mind as to who this was. We pointed our pistols at each other in what amounted to a Mexican standoff.

"You know if you pull that trigger you will never get out of here alive. Why don't you put down the gun?", he said, his English clear but tinged with a Slavic accent.

"Perhaps it's a good day to die", I said, having no intention of giving up my weapon.

I kept my gun trained on him as he walked over to the window. He opened the window with one hand and then tossed his weapon out into the shrubs outside. "Perhaps we could settle this without guns", he said.

I probably should have shot the son of a bitch then and there but there was something in my male ego that just wouldn't allow me to do that. Besides, he was probably right about my not getting off the grounds alive.

I put my gun on the table and slid it down to the other end.

We circled each other like a couple of surly dogs as he arrogantly sized me up. He was the young dog, sleek and strong and arrogant in his strength. I was the old dog scarred and greying but experienced and mean. He was reported to be extremely skillful in the martial arts. One thing I know about martial arts experts. They depend on finesse and coordination rather than brute force. When you hit them on the button with a good hard punch, they sometimes lose all of that finesse and coordination. So I popped him in the face with a good old American left jab. His nose started bleeding and he wiped some from his face and looked at it in amazement. I jabbed him again and then smacked him under his left eye with a straight, compact right hand. I attempted to follow this with a left hook but at this point he decided to take me seriously.

He attacked me with a coordinated series of punches and kicks, none of which was extremely powerful but all of which were delivered with a speed which I could not match. I adopted my gangly puppet defense, using my long arms to protect my head and body and I soaked up most of his blows with my arms. The ones that made it through my arms didn't do much more than jar my vision. I tried to throw another right hand which was what he was waiting for. I never even saw the punch or kick coming. I couldn't tell

which it was, I just experienced an explosion of stars in my vision and found myself on my hands and knees on the floor. I tried to get up but he began to hammer me with vicious kicks to my ribs and midsection. He must have delivered another one to my head because the next thing I knew I was laying on the floor with my hands bound behind me. He was splashing ice water in my face and talking to me.

"Hey McGee, wake up. The fun is just starting."

The light was bright and glaring and his voice was a demonic screeching in my ears. I figured that I had a concussion. He hauled me to my feet and propped me against the wall. The ground met my feet at a strange angle and I wobbled, struggling to maintain my balance. He made a noose out of an extension cord and put it around my neck. He threw it over one of the ceiling support beams and hauled on it until I had to stand on tiptoes to avoid being strangled. He had taken my wallet from my pants pocket and to find out who I was, now he stuffed it into my shirt pocket.

"You came for the girl, didn't you McGee? Well I'm not going to disappoint you, here she is."

He had brought Miraflor down while I had been passed out. She stood there naked and blindfolded with her hands trussed behind her. She was wearing some kind of platform shoes with impossibly high heels and black leather ankle straps. A stainless steel choker collar was around her neck and Alexi held a leash attached to it. She had a classic woman child's body, budding breasts and a slim waist which flared into the beginning of mature woman hips. Her pubic patch was black and glossy.

"Isn't she pretty McGee? I'm going to have some fun with her while you watch. Hope your legs hold out until I'm finished.", he said, dragging her forward by her collar and choking her with it.

"I really don't want to damage the merchandise so I'm just going to use this birch switch on her", he said, picking up a switch from the table and cutting the air with it. "It has a really fiery sting on the skin but it doesn't damage the underlying flesh.", he demonstrated by striking her breasts with the switch. She hissed with pain and squirmed.

"When I'm finished switching her she's going to get this", he said, dropping his pants and showing me his huge organ.

There are some men and women who are sexually aroused by pain and humiliation and I suppose if they are properly paired up there's no harm in it. This was not the case here. This man was sexually aroused by inflicting pain and humiliation. He didn't care how much his victim suffered. He proceeded to whip her with the switch and kept up a running commentary as he went. "I keep her blindfolded so she can't see where it's coming from and flinch out of the way. It's more effective this way."

Mira twisted and squirmed under the switch. Alexi kept it up until she began to cry out with each stroke. Then he bent her over one of the heavy dining room chairs and tied her leash to a rung so that she couldn't stand up. He undid her ankle straps and ran them around the legs of the chair so that she couldn't move her legs.

"I read a book about the techniques of the old Arab slavers. When they had a woman who wouldn't lubricate when they wanted to use her they would whip her from behind like this. When you hit somebody in these sensitive areas it causes involuntary contractions of the abdominal muscles which make the woman lubricate. When she’s nice and juicy you can use her for your pleasure."

He proceeded to demonstrate, whipping the sensitive flesh, making her pelvis rock and quiver uncontrollably. "Look at this McGee. Look how nice and juicy she's getting.", he said thrusting his fingers into her. "Wouldn't you like some of this?".

I just stood there in silent rage, willing my calf muscles not to start cramping. I only had one chance to escape and I had to wait until he was thoroughly distracted before I could take it. He released her from the chair and pushed her down on her back on the floor. He pinned her legs back against her chest and began to force himself into her. She was well lubricated, but he was so large that it was hard for her to take him in. He kept at her until he got most of it in and then began a rhythmic, savage thrusting. She began to make a sound of demented guttural laughter as raw sensation overloaded her senses.

I have long gangly arms, longer than a man of my height is supposed to have. This time they saved my life. I steeled my neck muscles against the bite of the noose and lifted my legs up against my chest. Then I worked my bound hands under my legs and feet and got them in front of me. I got back on my tiptoes and used my fingers to relieve the strangling bite of the noose. I dropped my full weight on the wire of the extension cord hoping that the copper wire inside would stretch and break. On the third try it gave and I almost went down. Alexi was still savaging the girl and didn’t notice. I thought briefly about assaulting him but my hands were still bound with coat hanger wire, I was still out of kilter from the concussion and my guts were screaming for mercy. I decided that it would be better in the long run for both of us if I made my escape and tried again later. I lurched through the dining room, stopping to scoop up my gun, and then back out through the kitchen and the door I had left ajar. The ground met my feet at a crazy angle making it difficult to stand, let alone run. I had to walk very deliberately across the lawn to the trees.

I kept working at the wire on my wrists until it began to fatigue and then parted, freeing my wrists. I had just made the woods when Alexi came bellowing out the door screaming my name. He was wearing his trousers again but he didn't have his gun. When he started screaming the guards and the dogs went into action. I hobbled back towards the wall and was almost there when one of them entered the grove with a flashlight and a gun. I hid in the shadow of a tree and waited for him to pass. If you put yourself in the shadow at night you become invisible to someone in the light.

The guard carried his own light and his own blindness with him. I put the safety on the gun and held it above my head. When he was just past me I brought it down on his head. He dropped to his knees stunned but not out. I cracked him twice more with the pistol, not caring whether I killed him. I was desperate to put him out of action. I picked up his pistol. It was a .357 magnum with a four inch barrel. I switched off his flashlight and made for the wall. Somehow I found the strength to claw my way up a tree near the wall and then to drop down on top of it.

The dogs located me then. Baying in frustration and rage at their quarry which was just out of reach. Alexi and the guards heard them too and began hurrying towards the sound. I could see him coming towards me over the lawn. I took careful aim with the .357 and squeezed of a round.

Do you believe that a person's will can affect the flight of a bullet? Alexi was over 75 yards away when I fired, an almost impossible shot with a pistol, but he went down and began screaming and cursing in some foreign language. The the shock of the bullet had released his grasp of English for the moment.

I dropped over the wall and rolled out of the fall like a paratrooper. I was just getting to my feet when Big Mike came driving up in the rental car. I crawled in and slammed the door. Big Mike turned the car around and headed slowly up the road so as not to attract attention. We had only gone a short distance when we heard sirens and saw flashing lights coming towards us. We kept up a leisurely pace and they ignored us in their hurry to get to the scene of the crime.

Big Mike looked at the ruin of my face in the dashboard lights. "Jesus, McGee. What happened to you?".

"I got a lesson in hand to hand combat, a concussion, an exhibition of some kinky sex, not to mention a real nice gun. They were right about Alexi. He did have an enormous tool.", I said fighting off a sudden wave of nausea.

"Did have?", Big Mike asked with a grin.

"I put a bullet into the son of a bitch. If it hit what I was aiming at he doesn't have one anymore."

Then I passed out with Big Mike's laughter ringing in my ears.

Chapter 15

I was bruised and battered. I ached in places I had forgotten I had. When we got back to the motel I had begun to stiffen up and the adrenaline faded, leaving me feeling shaky and weak. It was all I could do get out of the car and into the room. Big Mike went down the street to the local drug store store and came back with some Tylenol and a fifth of bourbon. Actually it was 750 milliliters of bourbon, a symbol of the rip off of the American consumer by the liquor industry. They changed the size of the bottle from a fifth of a gallon to something slightly less and then charged the customer more for each bottle, supposedly to make up for the cost of retooling to metric standards. All they really did was put less in the bottle and print a new label. It only cost the consumer thirty or forty cents per bottle, but made millions for the liquor industry.

I washed down a few of the Tylenol with a stiff slug of bourbon and then got into the shower, setting the temperature as high as I could stand it. I urinated there in the tub so that I could see if my kidneys were seriously damaged from the pounding they had taken. I saw no signs of blood. After the shower, when the bourbon and the Tylenol had taken affect, I began to feel halfway human.

Big Mike had been busy while I was recuperating. It seems that he knew a local computer hacker who owed him a favor for bailing him out of a scrape in New York. He had asked him if he could crack the systems of the local hospitals to see what had happened to Alexi. The phone rang while I was toweling off and Big Mike began listening intently to the hacker on the phone. Then a smile cracked across his broad face and he began chuckling. He put down the phone and turned to me.

"Hey McGee. Not bad shooting for and old guy like you. Have you ever heard the expression about giving your left nut for something? It seems that our buddy Alexi the terrible lost his tonight."

We laughed. We laughed until our sides hurt. Every time we almost had it stopped one of us would start up again taking the other two with him on a new jag. We poured bourbon and toasted Alexi's missing testicle and laughed some more. Then Big Mike sobered us up. The smile vanished from

his face.

"What are we going to do now?", he asked, dashing cold water on our euphoria. “We can’t give up now.”

We decided to stake out the boat. When we saw the boat being loaded with it's contraband cargo we would call up the coast guard and give them a hot tip about drug smuggling and then arrive on the scene like the seventh cavalry while the coast guard was searching the boat. We knew where the boat was so we began standing watches around the clock.

During the day it was relatively easy to blend in with the summer boating crowd. In the wee small hours of the morning it was a different story. There were a couple of places on the dock where a man could hide in the shadows and, if he didn't move, he could be invisible. Still it took a lot of determination to maintain vigilance for that long so we took turns doing two hour watches from midnight until sunup.

We had to wait five days for them to make their move. It probably took that long for Alexi's wound to heal well enough for him to travel. We came to relieve Manny just after dawn. When we got there Manny was gone and so was the Beau Soleil. I took a look in one of the hidey holes we had used. All I found was Manny's zippo and a half a pack of Marlboros. Three days later some fishermen found Manny floating in the river. It wasn't to hard to figure out what happened. Manny had been spotted when he lit a cigarette and had been summarily disposed of. We had missed again.

Big Mike stood there and shook his huge head. "Manny was a soldier, McGee. He made a soldiers pay and he took a soldiers chance but this still don't go down any easier. When you finally catch this SOB I wan't you to kill him once for Manny."

We knew that the boat couldn't have been gone more than two hours, but from the Mystic river, with the tide running out full blast, a boat the size of the Beau Soleil running under power could be in the open Atlantic by now. Even a boat that size is a very small needle to find in the vastness of the north Atlantic ocean. Our only chance now was to find out where the boat was going. I decided to try the local bait shop, marina office and ship's chandlery to see what I might find out.

Mike waited in the car while I walked into the office cum baitshop and boat supply and found a middle aged man behind the counter who proved to be most helpful.

"Beau Soleil? You looking for that cheap son of a bitch? You just missed him mister. He pulled out of here in the middle of the night still owing me the rent on the mooring. You'd think a guy with a boat like that going on a hundred feet wouldn't have to chisel a little guy like me. If I had the money for a boat like that I'd retire and live off the interest."

I nodded in sympathy and let him ramble on for a bit.

"He was so cheap that he came in here and asked for a detail chart of the Bahamas, scribbled all over it and then didn't want to fork over the two bucks for it. I tell you, some people just have no manners."

"What kind of chart was it?", I asked as innocently as I could.

"It's just a cheap chart that shows anchorage's around the Bahamas. They're popular with a lot of the sail boat types. They come in a big pad, you know. I just tear one off the top and sell them for two bucks."

"You say he bought the one he wrote on?", I asked.

"Yeah, after I twisted the cheap turkey's arm".

"Have you sold any since?", I asked hopefully.

"No. Would you like to buy one?".

“Actually I’d like to buy the rest of the pad.”

I forked over the cash for the charts and also purchased a soft lead carpenter's pencil and some fine sand paper and headed back out to the car. We took the chart to a local diner and took it to a booth in the rear of the place where we wouldn't be disturbed. We ordered coffee and I gave the waitress a large tip to leave us alone and I got down to work. I laid the chart pad on the table and used the sandpaper to sprinkle fine granules of graphite over the surface. Then I gently tapped the paper and slid the graphite back and forth to let the powder settle into the indentations on the paper. There was a place called Dutch Harbor which appeared to be a sheltered anchorage off of one of the smaller keys located in the southwestern portion of the Bahamas. There was a date written next to the circle. It was not quite two weeks from today. I had the feeling that, if I got there first, I could settle this matter once and for all.

I got on the horn with Meyer, I told him to have the Flush hauled, scraped and painted on an emergency basis. The Flush isn't what you call a speedboat by any means but a nice clean bottom will add three knots to her top speed. That gives her a mind bending ten knots with the diesels hammering. Then I called Miraflor's father and told him to meet me in Fort Lauderdale in three days. I had drawn Alexi's blood and he had drawn mine. I knew what I was up against this time. This time I was going for the kill.

Chapter 16

The flight down from New York was uneventful. I changed planes in Atlanta for Fort Lauderdale. We were away from the gate on time and then sat on the ramp for half an hour waiting for our turn to take off. We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale exactly on time which means that the airline had factored the ramp time into it's calculation of travel time between Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale.

Have you ever heard of a term called double speak? I think this is a prime example. I looked down on the narrow strip of land between the sea and the glades. There wasn't much left near the sea and the federal government has finally cracked down on development in the glades. The whole eco system is teetering on the brink of disaster and still the sugar companies and developers are slavering to wrest more profits from the fragile land. It's funny how the very people who inhabit those same new developments become environmentalists after they move in.

Meyer was waiting for me at the gate when I got off the plane. I never suspected him for being the sentimental type, but he soon put me straight.

"Cool your jets, Trav. Mr. Johnson is due in from Texas in about twenty minutes. I wasn't that desperate for the sight of your ugly face," he said with a smile.

I could tell he was lying. “It’s was good to see your ugly face too. How's the boat doing?"

"The Flush should be back in the water the day after tomorrow. We didn't see any sign of rot or teredos. Just a bunch of extremely hardy barnacles."

Teredo worms are the bane of the wooden boat owner in the warmer waters of the world. They burrow into the wood and make their homes there, gradually weakening the planks.

The only defense used to be planking your boat with cypress, but modern science developed an extremely toxic caulking compound which will penetrate and poison the wood. This will kill the teredos if it doesn't kill the person using it first. The Flush was recaulked with it some years back and so far it had prevented the little buggers from eating the hull. I had gone over the engines not long ago myself and I had confidence in them.

Mr. Johnson arrived on time. He had brought J. R. with him. J.R. was walking without a cane now. Only a slight limp betrayed the injuries he had sustained. I filled them in on the situation on the way to the hotel. Ordinarily I would have bunked in with Meyer, but since expenses were being paid, I checked into the same hotel as Mr. Johnson and J.R. I hadn't even tossed my suitcase on the bed when room service showed up with a bottle of Boodles, some fresh limes and a bucket of ice. I was just taking that first icy sip when there was knocking at my door. It was my employer and his protege. I offered them a drink.

"Don't mind if I do, Trav. I don't drink much these days but I could stand one now. How about you J.R.?"

J.R. allowed as how he could stand one too. We all stood around in silence for a minute or two then Mr. Johnson said, "You really think we can get her back, Trav?"

"We can probably get her back, Mr. Johnson. You might not recognize the person you get back. She's been living in a world not many get to see and few ever come back from. I just hope you realize that."

"She's all I've got, Trav. No matter what condition she's in, I want her back. I have considerable resources and I've already been consulting with doctors and psychiatrists preparing for her return. She may not be the same, but I think she can be salvaged. At any rate, that's what keeps me going."

"Well, the boat will be ready the day after tomorrow. We'll need to lay in supplies for a couple of weeks and make sure we're well armed. Then we'll go out and slay the dragon. I've got a feeling that its all going to end right here."

"Why don't we try to intercept them at sea? If they aren't due to make the connection with the buyer for two weeks we should be able to catch them before that", Mr Johnson said.

"Finding a boat in the open ocean, even a hundred footer, is a very tricky proposition. There are millions of square miles of open ocean and if you fly high enough to cover much of it, you can lose a boat that size in the glare from the sun. It could be hiding in a cloud or a rain squall. The coast guard could probably find it, but they aren't interested unless you're sinking or on fire. I'm afraid that the best option we have is to be patient and wait for them to come to us."

There isn't much in the way of small arms that you can't buy in south Florida if you have money and connections. We picked up a couple of highly illegal Uzis and a snipers rifle. J.R. got a couple of Baretta nine millimeter automatics for himself and Mr. Johnson and I settled for trusty Colt Diamond Back revolvers. Meyer isn't much good with guns, but he is an experienced boat handler. He also promised us the benefit of his keen intellect. When we set off for the Bahamas two days later we were, as they say, loaded for bear.

The passage from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas isn't long, even at the stately six knot cruising speed of the Busted Flush, but it can be rough. The gulf stream is a river flowing through the Atlantic ocean, carrying the sun heated waters of the Caribbean northward and eastward to warm the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. There are places on the southeastern reaches of England where palm trees grow without damage from frost.

Here between the mainland and the islands the stream is intense and focused. The current running over the rough bottom kicks up standing waves not unlike the chop in white water rapids. The Flush is a heavy, easy riding craft, but even she pitched and yawed as we made the crossing of the warm green waters. I had taken the precaution of placing Dramamine patches on the landlubbers before we left shore. Once you start tossing your cookies it's too late to say you're sorry.

Our first port of call was Nassau. Nassau is a booming city driven by the need of Americans to gamble in casinos. A lot of the people who come here never set foot on the white sand beaches or swim in the clear blue waters. They leave just as pale as they were when they arrived. The only thing that has changed for them is that they are older and poorer.

I have never been able to appreciate the thrill of casino gambling although I do appreciate a good game of poker. That is how I acquired the Busted Flush and how she got her name. I was in a game with a south American playboy who came up a card short of a flush after he had put her up as collateral. I declined to sell her back to him and we have enjoyed each other’s company ever since.

It took us the better part of a day and a half at sea to reach Nassau, taking turns at the helm. We laid over for the night in Nassau, renting a temporary berth at a place that featured hot showers and a divey little restaurant and lounge. The food, as you sometimes find at divey little restaurants in these parts, was surprisingly good.

The chef did an alicante version of red snapper that was absolute gustatory heaven. Red snapper is a fish that doesn't travel well. You have to get it fresh from the ocean and cook it before the day is out to really appreciate it. The snapper we ate was mere hours from the water.

We topped off our tanks with fuel and water and headed southward towards Great Exuma. The place we were looking for was in a chain of uninhabited islands just north of great Exuma. To my way of thinking we should arrive there four or five days before the Beau Soleil, giving us time to set up a plan of attack. We arrived in the vicinity of the little island late in the afternoon and dropped the hook in the lee of a small islet nearby. The islands were supposed to be uninhabited, but we had seen smoke from cook fires rising above some of them. I had heard that many illegal immigrants from Haiti had taken up residence on some of these islands where there was a supply of fresh water. They subsisted there on the local flora and fauna until they had a chance to sneak into Florida or a hurricane came along and washed them into the sea. Untold thousands of Haitians have died trying to reach Florida. We hear about the ones who make it to our shores or the ones who are picked up by the coast guard and returned. The ones we don't hear about are those who perish at sea when their rickety, overloaded boats are caught in storms or when they simply break down and doom the occupants to a slow death by starvation and thirst.

The next morning we found the rendezvous point. It was a small sheltered harbor on the east side of a small, nameless island. There was evidently enough fresh water available to support human life because we could see the smoke of cook fires coming from the tangle of palm trees on shore. The whole island was less than one square mile but if you know where to look you can find fresh water even on an island this small. It may not be Perrier, but it will keep you alive.

The harbor was deserted so I figured that we had made it in plenty of time. I wanted to set up an observation post on the island so that I would know when the quarry was within reach, but I was worried about the inhabitants. It turns out that J.R. was from east Texas and had spent enough time hunting and fishing in the bayous of Louisiana to pick up a little Cajun Creole. He volunteered to make contact.

We broke out the dingy and J.R. tucked his nine millimeter into his pants and rowed into shore. He was back in less than an hour with two wiry black men crammed into the dingy with him. When they were on board we gave them each a cold beer, which they drank in huge swallows, and then we began negotiations.

"Best I can make out, these guys are Haitians. They got this far when their boat developed engine trouble and they managed to limp in here before it died. They've been living on water, fish, coconuts and such for months now. Some of them died of thirst before they got a proper well dug. Some of them died of fever and some of them left in one of the life boats so there aren't all that many of them left here.”

They say they'll help us in return for some flour and corn meal and oil. I don't think a little booze would hurt either. They say they can show us a place where we can hide the boat nearby so that we can spy on the

harbor".

I didn't waste a lot of time thinking about it. We fed the Haitians, who turned out to be named Jean Claude and Etienne. They spoke in Creole for the most part, but had a few words of English. They were almost cross eyed with delight over the fried egg sandwiches with cheese that Meyer whipped up in the galley. It seems that it had been a long time since they had eaten bread or fresh eggs and they had been having dreams about them.

They guided us to a small cut in a seemingly impenetrable wall of marl rock. It had been created by rum runners during prohibition and although the dock had long since collapsed in ruin the water was still deep and clear inside. They had hidden their old wooden freighter there. They had been bailing the bilge on a regular basis and the boat still sat high and looked relatively sea worthy.

"What happened to their boat?", Meyer asked.

A brief exchange of Creole ensued between Jean Claude and J.R. before he answered Meyer's question. It seems that the belt on their generator and water pump broke. They were able to jury rig a belt for the water pump till they found this island, but the battery died and they couldn't get it restarted after that. We could earn their eternal gratitude if we had a spare belt. They have also been using the diesel fuel for some crude oil lamps and stoves they use when they can’t scrounge enough driftwood for a fire."

I always keep spare belts and hoses aboard for little emergencies that seem to arise when one is far from the nearest marine parts store. I found a belt that was a couple of inches smaller than what they needed. With a great deal of knuckle skinning ingenuity they managed to get it around all of the pulleys without breaking it. It was stretched tight as a ‘g’ string, but it would work for a while. Then we hooked their batteries up to the Flush's charging system and soon the old diesel was soon hammering vigorously. We gave them fifty gallons of fuel and Mr. Johnson, grateful for their offer of help, gave them some American greenbacks to help them on their way.

I broke out some of my spare fishing tackle and made them a gift of two sturdy rigs. They weren't interested in sport fishing, they were out for food so we laid on the heaviest line we had with some near indestructible wire leaders. They went fishing in the lagoon near the reef using a raft they had made of palm logs. They only fished for an hour or so when the tide was running just right, but they came back loaded.

We had a feast with them that night. We supplied the booze and the spices and some cooking needs. A ragged chef who claimed to have cooked for the Duvaliers performed magic with the local seafood.

We sat under the stars around a flickering driftwood fire. The stars glowed in the clear Caribbean sky and the soft, liquid air flowed around us. The chief spokesman of the group discussed the Haitian plight at

length using his few words of English and J.R.’s smattering of Creole. "You know one time Haiti was a paradise on earth. Anything a man want he can get from the land or the sea. Meat, fish, fruit. Anything. These days bellies are empty, children bloat and starve. The women cry and the men can do nothing for them.”

"Who is to blame? The white man? No. Every white man on the island was killed in the revolt. Was it the Duvaliers or those who followed them? No. This is what ruined it," he said grasping his crotch.

"We fucked our way out of paradise. Too many people, not enough land, not enough jobs not even enough wood. So we leave in rotten boats, because it’s better than staying in Haiti.”

"People die in the boats. They are always overloaded and leaky. When the storms come the stronger ones throw the weaker ones overboard so the boat don't sink. Sometimes the boat sink anyway and a hundred maybe two hundred people disappear into the bellies of the sharks. They are the only ones who get fat these days. The fact that so many pay for the privilege of taking that chance gives you some idea how bad it is."

Volunteers took turns watching the harbor through the night and when I awoke in the morning with my head a little fuzzier than I would have liked, the harbor was still empty. We set up a little routine of watching, sleeping and waiting for our prey to arrive. On the afternoon of the fifth day, a big two masted ketch sailed into the harbor and dropped anchor. The Beau Soleil had arrived. The game was afoot.

Chapter 17

We decided to move at dawn the next morning. Sunrise was supposed to be shortly after six so we would strike at about quarter to when the first light made things easy to see, but while our adversaries were likely to be sleeping. Plan "A" was for J.R. and I to cover the two hundred or so yards in the dingy and board the yacht while Meyer and company sat aboard the Flush with the engines warm and idling waiting to charge to the rescue.

J.R. would cover the deck while I went below to rescue the child. In our observation of the Beau Soleil before it got dark we observed three men on deck. There was no sign of the girl, but I had a strong feeling that she was there.

Things started off well enough. We were halfway across the harbor when I heard the diesels on the flush start up and mutter in a low idle behind me. I was worried about the noise, but I saw no reaction from the boat so I figured that it wasn't enough to wake them up. We eased silently up to the long white hull of the Beau Soleil. There was a swim ladder down the rear quarter of the hull and I was able to climb up without making any noise. J.R. followed with his Uzi and took up position where he could sweep the deck with fire if need be. I took my colt in my right hand and slowly made my way down the main companionway. It wasn't quite full daylight out, but still it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom below decks. I moved slowly through the small galley and into the common room of the boat. There was a small TV set and stereo combination built into one wall and dining facilities and boat furniture secured to the deck. I heard the sound of a marine toilet being flushed and a door on the other side of the cabin opened and she appeared. It was Miraflor. A little older, a little more mature than her picture but there was no mistaking her for anyone else.

"Oh, Christ. Don't tell me I have to fuck you too!" she said in a voice that was filled more with disgust and resignation then alarm.

I put my finger in front of my lips in the universal sign for 'hush up'. "Your father sent me. He's waiting for you on my boat. Keep quiet and let's get out of here," I said as quietly as I could.

She screamed at something behind me and I turned to look. I remember watching Muhammad Ali's last fight before he retired for good. He said that father time had caught up with him. He said that he had seen his shots, but that he just couldn't take them. I felt the same way. Alexi's sleek hard body lunged across the room and had me by the wrist of my gun hand before I could react. We struggled for control of the gun. He was younger, stronger and faster than me. I knew that in a fair fight he could kill me with his bare hands, but we were in close quarters now, no room for maneuver. I was meaner, sneakier and more determined than him. I was dammed if I was going to come this far and let him beat me now. I stomped on his instep. I shoved off the wall with my feet and landed hard on top of him. We rolled around on the deck vying for control of the gun. The gun went off twice, the noise deafening belowdecks. I smashed the back of my head into his face and his grip weakened. I ignored my own pain and bashed him with my head twice more. He let go of my wrist and I scrambled up on my knees. Then I smashed the pistol into the side of his face with both hands and all the strength I had. He collapsed on the deck and I got quickly to my feet. He came around and started up but I aimed the gun between his eyes and thumbed back the hammer. He froze.

"Get up on deck, Now! Your father is coming to get you.", I shouted at Miraflor. I could hear the sound of the Flush's diesel hammering away at maximum speed. The girl ran up the stairs and I heard her talking to J.R. Then I heard the bang of a deck hatch and J.R.s uzi chattering briefly followed by the splash of a body going over the side. I figured it would take about thirty seconds for the Flush to close the distance.

Then I became aware of two things. One was that the air was becoming saturated with the smell of gasoline the other was that there was a rock growing in my chest. The demon was back. Alexi, meanwhile, was trying to bargain with me.

"Common McGee, you don't know what you're messing with here. Give me the gun and I'll let you go free.", said the Alexi as he gingerly felt the cuts on his face.

"What can the girl be worth to you now? I'll give you a hundred thousand American dollars. Just walk away."

I didn't say anything. I just motioned him back down with the gun and tried to ignore the screaming pain in my chest. What had the doctor said about violent exertion and plaque ruptures?

I heard the approach of the Flush and felt the hull of the yacht react when she bumped along side. I heard J.R. shouting something about gasoline and then I heard the Busted Flush moving away, diesels bellowing at full throttle. Alexi spoke again.

"Do you smell that McGee? That's gasoline. If you fire that gun we could all go up like the fourth of July. Why don't you just be reasonable and hand it over. Besides, you don't look so good McGee. You look like a ghost."

My vision was beginning to go gray around the edges and there were small bright stars crawling around the edges. I noticed with satisfaction that my hand was not shaking in the least as I drew a bead on his chest and deliberately squeezed the.........

BAD Ending

Chapter 18 -- That's all folks

This is Meyer speaking. I know that I have never spoken to you before and I will probably never speak to you again, but there is a story to be finished and, since Travis isn't here to speak for himself, I feel that I

must finish it for him.

We watched from cover as Travis and J.R. approached the Beau Soleil. We saw them stealthily board the yacht and then Travis disappear below. We started the diesels on the Busted Flush and left them idling to keep them ready to go at a moments notice. When we heard the muffled sound of gunfire from the Beau Soleil we came roaring out of the cut making a frothy ten knots across the still lagoon.

While we were crossing the two hundred yards clear green water we saw an armed man clamber up out of one of the forward hatches. J.R. cut loose with two short, well aimed bursts from his Uzi and the man went over the side and was not seen again. I was at the controls and managed to cut the throttles and turn the wheel at just the right time to fetch up against the side of the yacht with a light bump. By that time there was a young girl with glossy black hair on deck being helped by J.R. They scrambled on board and J.R. was screaming something about gasoline and explosions. I hated to do it, but I had to pull away. I gave her full throttle and we roared away back the way we had come. We had made barely a hundred yards when the Beau Soleil exploded violently and began to burn fiercely. It probably would have burnt to the waterline, but a secondary explosion blew out a section of the hull and she sank hissing beneath the clear green water.

Etienne and his friend came out in their log raft and helped us recover Trav's body. Travis wasn't too badly singed because the boat had gone down so quickly. We cleaned him up as best we could and wrapped him in a blanket for the journey home.

The Haitians also brought up the body of the other man who had fared somewhat worse. His chest had been split open by the bullet and the blast or perhaps a shard from the secondary explosion which must have been a propane tank of some sort. His heart had been quite thoroughly burned. The Haitians brought him ashore and showed him to one of their number who was evidently a voodoo priest. He cut Alexi's heart out with great care and took it with him.

They buried the body with some sort of ceremony that day before we left. The priest spoke to us in Creole as he was removing the man's heart and J.R. translated for us as best he could.

"He says that this man was very evil. He says that he trafficked in the flesh of children and cared only for gold. He says that there is powerful magic in the heart of such a man when it is properly prepared. He

says that this man had a heart as black as coal, great medicine."

We left the Haitians to their own devices. Mr. Johnson gave them a substantial amount of cash to help them on their way. We later saw them on the evening news when they managed to dock their boat at an exclusive marina and make it onto American soil. They spent some time at the Krome Avenue detention center but they later became relatively prosperous citizens of Miami's Haitian community.

We brought Travis home and, after the autopsy, we had him cremated. The pathologist determined that he had died instantly from the blast but that he was in the process of having a heart attack that would have killed him within minutes anyway.

We didn't plan on a funeral, but word spread and people descended on the Bahia Mar from all over the planet.

J.R. and Mr. Johnson and his daughter came back for the funeral, which was actually a very large, boozy and sentimental party. I got horribly drunk on Boodles gin in McGee's honor. I was joined in this endeavor by a very large gentleman from New York who looked like a refugee from the NFL, but who had a mind like a steel trap. I have since become a member of his investment club, which invariably does better in predicting the future of the market than I ever could. He was so taken with Miss Agnes, Travis's elegant Rolls pickup, that I sold her to him for a dollar. He said he always had a soft spot for fallen ladies.

He brought with him a rather elegant blond lady who purported to have McGee's last will and testament. When I took his ashes out with me to scatter along the snook holes he loved to fish along the southeast coast of Florida. The blond lady insisted on coming along for the ride and gave me the "iron lady" treatment. It was just what I needed to put me back on an even keel.

Travis McGee’s wordly goods, including the ten million his estate received for the successful conclusion of his last mission, were distributed in accordance with the will he made in Long Island. His

daughter Jean is now a millionaire. The woman we knew as Lizzy gave birth to twin sons in New York and their education is well funded should they decide to attend an institution of higher learning.

I don't live on the Busted Flush, but I couldn't sell her either. I use her as sort of a club house and when I am entertaining one of my Iron Ladies.

Last month a wiley, scarred tomcat took up residence on board. I was going to take him to the humane society, but I decided to let him be. I got him his shots and named him McGee. I talk to him, but he isn't any better at taking my advice then the first McGee was so when he comes in battered and bleeding from a scrap with another tom, I clean his wounds and give him some cream and let him rest and heal for his next adventure.

I thought about changing the name but some say it is bad luck to change the name of a boat. After all, Travis changed the name some thirty years ago and look what happened to him.

Strangers still show up on the dock once in a while, bringing their hopeless cases in search of a miracle. I tell them that Travis McGee is no longer in the business. I listen to their problems and then refer them either to J.R. Bonner in Texas or Big Mike in New York. I think Travis would approve.

Needless to say, the world won't be the same without Travis. Man is insignificant in the greater scheme of things even as the entire planet is an insignificant part of the fabric of the Universe, but Travis was so much a part of my life and the lives of so many around these parts that his passing marks the end of an era. Still he didn't die an old man in a hospital bed, he died, instead, in an explosion as sudden and violent as the life he led and he died bringing a small modicum of justice to this wicked, wicked world.

GOOD Ending

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I've been kicking this idea around in my head for a while and finally got it

down on paper(?). Here it is. For all of you who wanted Travis to

survive.

The light was pure, white, blinding. Was this the light Ihad heard about? Was I in heaven? Would I see my parents and mygrandfather? How about the buddies I had lost in the Korean war?The light snapped off, abruptly ending my revere and confusingthe hell out of me. I saw Myer’s hairy mug looking at me withconcern written all over it.

“Are you dead too?” I asked.

I noticed another face. She looked like a nurse.

“Mr. McGee?”

“Yes?” I answered.

She turned and ran out of the room.

“McGee, are you with us again?” asked Myer.

“I guess so. Where was I?”

“On a long strange trip, my friend.”

Just then doctor Lane hurried into the room, his facebright with anticipation. My focal range was beginning to extendmore. I noticed that it was a bright sunny day outside.

“Mr. McGee, nice to have your back. How do you feel?”

“A little strange, I must confess. Kind of spacey, really.”

“What was the last thing you remember?”

I thought for a moment and it slowly came back to me.

“I was in a boat. There were gasoline fumes. I felt a rock growing in my chest. I figured I was having the big one. I was about to die. I knew if I pulled the trigger the boat would go up like the fourth of July and I’d die for sure, but I couldn’t let Alexi win. I remember starting to pull the trigger. Then I woke up here.”

Another doctor hurried into the room. This one was not familiar to me.

“How is he?” the new arrival asked.

“He’s definitely back.” said doctor Lane.

“This is amazing. This could revolutionize the treatment

of heart attack victims!”

“Maybe in five or ten years.” said doctor Lane.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what the hell happened?”

Everybody started talking at once. The doctors were all babbling in medical techno speak. I held up my hand for silence.

“Myer, tell me what happened.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“At the boat.”

“Well, we had the girl and J.R. on board the Flush and were beating a hasty retreat. We could smell the gasoline fumes. Then the boat blew up. You came out of the companion way like a cannon ball and landed in the water. We fished you out less than a minute later, but you were out of it. Your heart was doing the Texas two step in your chest and your face was getting purple. We started CPR on you, but it wasn’t doing much good.”

Myer looked around the room for a second.

“Go ahead, tell him the rest.” said Dr. Lane.

“So we poisoned you.” said Myer.

“Poisoned me?”

“Sort of. You see Etienne had this zombie powder with him.”

“Zombie powder?”

“We analyzed it. It’s a form of Doto Toxin. It’s a paralytic nerve toxin made from a small reef fish.” said the new doctor.

“The Haitian Voodoo priests use it to turn people into Zombies.” said Myer.

“Zombies?”

“Yes, well, the important thing is that it reduces levels of respiration and heart rate to the point where they are imperceptible. The person appears to be dead. When they are kept above ground they slowly recover and go into the Zombie state.”

“So you poisoned me with this stuff?”

“Yes. We din’t have much choice. Etienne said it would keep you alive for a while and not to let them bury you no matter what. Mr. Johnson ordered up a helicopter and we had you back in Ft. Lauderdale in about three hours.”

“We thought you were dead, but Mr. Johnson convinced us to do a brain scan on you. We had a hard time finding a pulse but your brain was still alive so we went ahead and did the bypass surgery. Your heart rate was about five. It made the operation really easy.”

“I see, then what happened?”

“You slowly recovered and were in a Zombie like state.”

“For how long?”

“About three weeks.” Said Myer.

“Three weeks?”

“Yes. We were beginning to wonder if you would ever fully recover. I’m afraid it was Mr. Myer who made the break through.” said Doctor lane.

“I saw the Haitians on TV. They ran the blockade with their old boat and made it all the way to Port St. Lucie. They were taken to the Krome avenue detention center. I went and looked up Etienne. He gave me the cure.”

“Which was?” I asked, fearing tongue of bat and eye of

newt.

“Salt.” said Myer smiling.

“Salt?”

“I put potato chip in your mouth last night. You took the bag out of my hands, nearly killed me when I tried to get it back.”

“I ate potato chips?”

“Every crumb of a sixteen ounce bag.” Myer said, shaking his head, “Apparently it worked.”

“What about the Flush?” I asked.

“She’s in fine shape. J.R. brought her home. She’s waiting for you down at the Bahia Mar.”

“When can I go home?”

The doctors looked at each other and conversed once more in medical babble.

“Would you mind if we ran a few more tests? This could be very important for research Mr. McGee. Your vital signs look good so there’s no reason to keep you here any longer. We would be most grateful if you allowed us to run some tests, no charge to you.”

So Myer left to spread the good news. I allowed the good doctors to poke, prod, scan and sample to their hearts delight. Late that afternoon I was wheeled out the front door of the hospital to find a shining new Rolls Royce Corniche convertible, compliments of Mr. Johnson, waiting for me. J.R. drove me down the marina.

They had a wheel chair waiting for me, but I declined. With a little help from J.R. I wobbled my way down the dock to the Flush. I spent that night with friends, old and new. Out of consideration for the fact that I had just left the hospital, I only drank half a bottle of Boodles. Then I tumbled down into the big old bunk of the flush and reflected a bit before I drifted off to sleep.

The bit with the light got me thinking about eternity. I got to thinking that it would be kind of nice to see my mom and dad again and especially my grumpy old grandfather. I guess they’ll just have to wait a bit longer. I may be getting older, but I’m not dead yet.