RON AND I had a couple of celebratory beers overlooking the water, waiting for the sun to start dropping behind us toward the gulf. Then he drove us to the oceanfront apartment of his squeeze, the Lady Cassandra. I had no idea if she was really a lady, like a duchess or a princess or something, but she sure had the class of one. And despite Ron’s red cheeks and a face covered in the splotches of removed skin cancers, she had been utterly charmed by him. He had that way about him, and ladies of a certain age were often suckers for the wiles of Ron Bennett. But this time, he was as taken with her as she was with him. He still had his place in West Palm, but he was spending more and more time at the widow’s palatial digs. Cassandra was off playing tennis, so we left Ron’s car and walked back to the Escape. It was time to go shark hunting.
“You know, I like this car,” he said, as I pulled out toward the bridge, back to the mainland.
“Yeah, it’s boring but it does have a nice high ride.”
“Perfect car for kids.”
“If I run into any kids I’ll be sure to ask them what they drive.”
Ron smiled as we crossed the Intracoastal and headed out to Los Piños. It was the sublime to the ridiculous. Palm Beach was some of the most exclusive property on the planet, the sort of waterfront mansions that never even made the real estate section, but in twenty minutes we were in the soup of desperation and hope known as a low-rent trailer park.
I pulled the car into the lot of a liquor store where three hombres in bandanas looked my SUV over like hyenas spying a New York strip. We sat for a time watching the entrance to Los Piños as the sun fell behind us. I figured the darkness would suit El Tiburon better, and I was right. Just as boredom was setting in, we saw a black Corvette with the vanity plate tiburon cruise into the park. We got out and locked the Escape.
“There’s not going to a problem with my car, is there?” I said to the bandanas.
One of them smiled wide. “Nah, man. We’d have to pay to get rid of them parts.”
I nodded at them. It was true. Not even the local hoods were interested in my car, and for a moment I longed for my red Mustang convertible that had been smashed by some bad dudes who had wanted to hurt me. And hurt me they did. They had busted me up pretty bad, with a hockey stick as I recalled, and then smashed my Mustang into a tree. In my fragile state I had replaced the totaled Mustang with the Escape, and the hurt lingered on and on. I glanced back at the Escape as Ron and I crossed the road.
“See, the benefits of a small SUV keep on coming,” he said with a grin.
“Keep talking, pal. You drive a Camry.”
“My point exactly. Fine car it is, too.”
We didn’t get twenty steps into the trailer park before the old woman in the house-dress popped out of her trailer. She pointed across a rusted up children’s playground, to the trailers on the other side of the park.
“El Tiburon,” she whispered.
I waved. “Gracias.”
We wandered across the unkempt grass and found the Corvette parked at the end of a row of rusted trailers. No one was on the street. It felt like Dodge City, when the outlaws came to town. Some things never change.
“Which one do you think he’s in?”
“No way of telling,” I said, looking around. We could sit tight and wait to see if he came out, or if someone went in, but he might not even be on this street. I didn’t have the patience for more stakeout. I had tried to keep my powder dry, to keep my energy in potential like Lucas would do, but I was done with that. I was about to explode. Being back in the trailer park reminded me of what these people had done to Desi—and would keep doing, if someone didn’t show them the path to righteousness. I wandered over to a trailer that looked uninhabitable and saw the glow of a TV through the window. I picked up a weathered piece of two-by-four and walked back to the Corvette.
“He might have a gun,” said Ron.
“Yeah, you’re right. Go stand over there,” I said, nodding across the street. Ron retreated to the shadows, and I swung the piece of wood like it was a Louisville Slugger. I had played most of my professional baseball career under the designated hitter rule, so I didn’t get many at-bats. It gave pitchers a lot of room for bravado, to talk up their slugging ability when they never really had to face up at home plate. But it also meant there was a lot of pent-up energy, for all the grand slams that never were. I put all my home runs never taken into that piece of wood, and swung for the bleachers. The side mirror on the Corvette took flight, long and true, into the middle of the blacktop some fifty yards down the road. I gave myself a little whistle and waited, but no one came out. I wandered around the car and tried switch-hitting. This time I just connected, smashing the mirror but not moving the housing at all. My second try at it took the housing off and sprayed it into the window of a nearby trailer.
“Ah, foul ball.”
I dropped the wood onto the ground and stepped back into the shadows on the opposite side of the road from Ron. The trailer next to me rocked violently and two guys charged out, bouncing off each other in their haste. A third guy ran to the car and inspected the damage.
“Are you kidding me?” he screamed. He looked up the street, then spun the other way, as if the perpetrator was dumb enough to be standing in the middle of the road.
“I am going kill whoever done this! Look at my car, man.”
The other two guys hung back with their palms in the air. This told me two things. One was that the angry dude was the guy I was looking for, and two, the other two guys were probably not packing heat. El Tiburon certainly was. He snatched a big silver piece from his belt and waved it around like he was Pancho Villa.
“Find them!” he screamed. “They got to be here somewhere.”
“Holy crap,” I said, stepping out of the shadows.
El Tiburon spun and pointed the gun at me.
“Who the hell are you?” said El Tiburon.
“Did you see what that guy did? He smashed your car for a home run.”
“Who did this? Tell me!” he yelled, waving the gun at everyone.
“That guy, he ran down there,” I said, pointing along the street.
“Where?”
“There. He hit your mirrors for a home run, dude. With this thing.” I bent over and picked up the two-by-four. I held it up for El Tiburon’s buddies to see.
“See, he used this. Like a bat.”
“Find him!” El Tiburon screamed at his guys.
“He just swung it like this,” I said, and I hefted the wood for one last swing, hard and true and straight into El Tiburon’s face. It wasn’t subtle in any way, but I wasn’t messing with a lunatic with a gun. And I had a little energy left that I needed to use up. I could have tried just talking to him, but these guys never seem like the diplomatic type. El Tiburon fell like a dead weight onto the grass, dropping the weapon. I picked it up. It was heavy, and that told me it was loaded. El Tiburon screamed. His nose had exploded as noses do, not a lot of damage but a lot of gore. Shock and awe, of a sort. I gestured for the other two guys to come stand by the Corvette, and they complied. Ron wandered over and patted them down, finding nothing, then I told them to sit on the ground, crisscross, apple sauce. I bent down to El Tiburon and pulled him against the car door.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s just blood, all right. You’re not dying, so stop the wailing.”
“Aaaargh, you hit me. You are a dead man.”
“Dead man?” I said, holding the gun up. He pulled the volume back to a whimper.
“What is your name?” I said.
“El Tibur—”
“No genius, not your stage name. Your real name.”
“Brandon,” he sobbed, looking at the blood on his hands.
“Brandon? Are you serious?” I shrugged. “Okay, Brandon. You’ve been selling drugs and organizing illegal bets in this park, correct?”
“You can’t prove nothing.”
It was true, but the truth was getting boring, so I smacked Brandon’s forehead with the butt of the gun.
“I’m not a cop, Brandon. I’m not trying to prove anything. But these things you’ve been doing, they’re going to stop. You don’t come here anymore. You understand?”
He nodded his head, but I wasn’t feeling full compliance, so I stood, grabbed the two-by-four, and put it through the driver’s side window. Shards of glass rained down on Brandon.
“Do you understand?”
This time the nodding was vigorous.
“If you come back here, I will know. And next time the blood won’t stop. Understand?”
More vigorous nodding.
“Okay. One last thing. You are not some criminal genius. You’re running numbers for someone. I need to know who.”
He shook his head.
“Brandon?” I said, like a schoolteacher.
“I don’t run nothing, man. I just recruit. I just tell ’em where to go, and I get a finder’s fee. That’s all.”
“And where do you tell them to go?”
“The fronton. They talk to some guys there, that’s it.”
I knew the guys. Redhead and Baldy. “What about if they are already a customer? What if those guys are not there?”
“They go to the fronton, they text me. Then I text the van.”
“The van?”
“That’s all I know.”
“Okay,” I said. I pulled Brandon away from the car and laid him down so I could grab his phone and car keys from his pocket. I held up the phone.
“I’m going to borrow this.” Then I held up the keys. “These I’m taking so you don’t do something stupid. I’ll drop them at the front entry of the trailer park. In ten minutes you get up and you go get them. Anything before, I might just have to shoot you.”
We left them on the grass, staring hard at the trailer in front of them. I dropped the keys to the Corvette at the edge of the road near the entrance, then Ron and I headed for the Escape. The car was in fine shape, and I waved the gun at the bandanas, just a friendly fellow saying hi. They waved back, which was nice.
“You know,” said Ron. “For a guy who’s not keen on violence, you’re pretty adept at it.”
“When you’re in China, you got to speak Chinese. Even if it doesn’t roll off the tongue so nice.”
“What now?” Ron asked.
“Longboard Kelly’s. I need a beer.” I put the gun into the console between us. “And Mick will know what to do with this gun so no one ever finds it.”