Saving an Innocent Man Read online

"Yeah, got two, that's it,” Mulholland yelled. Then he commanded the two women, "Alright, walk slow, into the other room. Don't try anything. Don't move fast."

  The three women stood in the middle of the living room.

  "Put your hands on your heads. All of you."

  As they obeyed, Mulholland couldn't resist just a flash of a grin. Diaz took a moment to pause and survey the fantasies in front of him.

  Diaz, sotto voce to Mulholland, "Every once-in-a while I can see an advantage to this shitty job."

  "What do you want us for? We ain't done nothin'. Leave us alone." It was the white girl with the black bottom. Blonde number one.

  "Shut up," Diaz barked. "If we ask you a question, you talk, otherwise keep your mouths shut, got that?"

  She pouted. They all pouted.

  "OK, you," Mulholland said to number two, trying to sound tough, "where is he?"

  "Where is who?"

  "Don't get cute. You think that we think you little ladies live here all alone? One big all-girl happy family?"

  "Tell them, Jackie, please!" said number one. "Tell them!"

  "He's not here,” said number two.

  "No shit?" said Mulholland, "I thought he might be hiding behind the drapes." There were no drapes.

  "Can I get a shirt on?" The request came from girl number two, who was standing there stark naked. Mulholland thought her breasts looked like honeydew melons picked from the vine with a little of the stems still attached to the fruit.

  "Yeah, can I get a shirt on? It's right over there," asked number one.

  "No, you can't get your shirts on." Diaz said with a sneer. "Just stand there."

  "Pigs!" Jackie said.

  "Call us pigs if you want, but you're less likely to run through that door if you don't have any clothes on, right?"

  "Wrong!" Jackie said almost spitting out the words.

  "Diaz, you keep Little Annie Fanny and her sister in here while I take a walk with this one." Mulholland motioned his gun toward the bedroom. The pretty black girl, hands still on her head, walked in front of him. He shut the door behind them.

  "Relax." He put his gun in his holster. "Put your arms down and sit down." She sat on the edge of the bed. She looked worried. "Look, we're not here to hassle you. All we want is some answers. Now, if you tell me what I want to know, I'll make up some story for the girls inside, so they'll never know you told me a thing. I'll help you get outta town if you want. But you gotta be straight with me."

  She just looked up at him, weighing the situation. She fidgeted with her fingers in her lap.

  "Now, we know Mike Galvo lives here, OK? And we heard he lives with more than one chick." She blinked. "Have I got it right so far?" She nodded.

  In the other room, Diaz had turned on the radio so the others couldn't hear Mullholland’s questions and the black girl’s answers. Diaz sat down and put his feet on an ottoman as the girls just stood there naked. They were looking better all the time, he thought. He hoped the questioning would take a while.

  Mulholland pressed on. "Now, does anyone else live here and are they expected home soon?"

  "Lynn. She's out of town. In Chicago, I think. She won't be home for about a week."

  "You mean, Galvo lives with four of you?" His eyes were wide.

  She nodded. "But we're not all here at the same time."

  "Why not?"

  "I'm a flight attendant. I'm away as much as I'm here. Lynn, the one in Chicago, just goes back and forth to Chicago for a week or two at a time. I really don't know what she does. I think her family has money. Jackie, inside, is here all the time. And Janet, she just lives here too. They make Michael happy. We all make Michael happy."

  Mulholland just stared at her for a few moments, trying to get his mind around the idea of living with four delicious looking women. Wait ‘til the guys at the precinct hear this one.

  He asked, "So, just where is Galvo right now?"

  "I really don't know."

  "Come on, honey, talk to me." He made a motion with his hand like an Italian goodbye.

  "I really don't know. Michael is a pilot. He used to fly for the airlines, not the one I work for, though. Now he flies small planes. He gets jobs. I never ask. I just hear things."

  "Like what?"

  "Like....things. It's none of my business." She paused. "I never thought it was this serious."

  "It's this serious. And you better believe you can get your ass thrown in jail ‘til you're an old lady if you don't start singing like a goddamn bird, now where is he?"

  She just looked up at him, her mouth locked.

  "Look, we got a tip that there's a big deal going down. Bigger than anything Galvo has gotten his ass into so far. Big money comin' down from Chicago. That ties into what's her name, who lives here, flyin' up to Chicago all the time. We want to know how the deal's going down and where. It might involve Black Tar and..."

  "Black Tar?"

  "Black Tar heroin, from South America. It’s rough. Crude. Cheaper to buy than regular heroin. Think! You must have heard something!"

  "I just heard he was maybe going to the coast. I don't know if that means California or the west coast of Florida."

  "Like maybe you heard Everglades City?" No response. "Or maybe Chocoloskee Island?" She didn't even blink. "Or maybe Naples?"

  "Maybe. Yeah. Maybe."

  Mulholland spoke into his cell phone. In moments he was saying, "Yeah, yeah. Get a list of every plane rented, stolen, leased or missing going to the west coast of Florida.”

  Three

  Hours had passed and Malcolm was still sitting in the exact same spot. His head was leaning against the fuselage of the plane. His eyes and the long, wide stripe on his back were still bleeding, oozing and gathering flies. His brain was still dazed and dulled by the trauma.

  He had dozed off for a spell, but now the horrific images were coming back in waves, in spats and spurts. The ‘snapshots’ were still out-of-focus but improving. Again, he saw the hypodermic needle plunged deep in the neck of the pilot, Mike Galvo. He saw the killer grab Galvo’s wrists in a life and death struggle. Galvo was bigger, younger and stronger, but it wasn't easy to get loose from the smaller, older man's grip, especially against the slippery aluminum surface of the suitcase on the killer’s lap. The shiny box was rising and falling, pitching upward, then suddenly forward. Galvo was cramping every muscle against his attacker in the confined space. The attacker's legs and the aluminum case had forced the co-pilot’s steering yoke away from the instrument panel toward the seats, causing the nose of the plane to be thrust upward. The plane slowed. The engine strained.

  Galvo's face and the killer's face came close together in the intense fight. Their eyes and veins were bulging. They were both grunting. Saliva was running from the corners of their mouths. They were locked in an embrace of violent death.

  Galvo was starting to weaken. The drug had started to take effect. In an involuntary response, Galvo’s entire body jerked forward pushing in the yoke and the plane tilted forward at a steep, nose-down angle. The plane picked up speed and the engine raced loudly.

  Galvo was failing fast. With the last ounce of strength in him, he freed his right hand and reached down beneath his right trouser leg. Galvo pulled out a blue-black .45 caliber revolver with a stubby two-inch barrel. When the smaller man saw the gun he went wild in panic, reaching for the weapon with both hands. This was exactly what he had wanted to avoid all along. A stray bullet, even one that had passed through a body, could easily hit the fuel tanks in the wings. It could destroy instruments. It could damage the engine. That's why he planned on a neat, fast, effective injection of curare, one of the world's deadliest poisons. Galvo should have been dead already, yet he seemed to have just enough strength in him to pull out this powerful small gun. What the killer did not know is that curare is a peculiar poison. Taken orally, it is practically harmless. Taken intravenously or intramuscularly, it causes paralysis quickly. Some of the curare had apparently been injected into Galvo
's throat.

  The plane was still at a steep, forward angle, but less than before, jerking its wings right and left and right again. The plane was now heading south over a vast expanse of green and wet jungle at a compass heading of 180 degrees toward uninhabited, isolated Cape Sable.

  The killer was now up on his left knee on the right front seat. The shiny suitcase was between them. The killer grabbed for Galvo's right hand, which was loosely holding the gun, but got his wrist instead. Galvo tried to twist his wrist enough to shoot the madman in the head. A cannon blast from the tiny gun practically shattered their eardrums! An eight-inch flame shot out of the two-inch barrel. Black burn marks streaked across the killer's cheek. A bullet the size of a large marble punched a hole in the plastic side window of the plane.

  Galvo rallied. There was still some fight left in him.

  The plane banked drastically to the right. Galvo threw his body across the man and his hand went to the door release. With all his might, Galvo pushed the door open against the onrushing air. The wind ripped in as Galvo tried to push his killer out. The plane lurched to the right into a radical bank.

  The killer now had Galvo's gun-wielding hand in a white-knuckled grip. Suddenly, the killer's head and shoulders sprang through the door opening, actually hanging out of the plane, head down, legs inside. Galvo was practically on top of him, pushing with all his might. Remarkably, the syringe was still hanging from Galvo's neck. But now, having done its job, it slipped out of the bright red puncture and fell away in the rushing air.

  The plane suddenly dipped its wing even more, nearly spilling both men out. Galvo was thrust forward, practically on top of the killer. The killer tightened his death grip on Galvo's gun hand and twisted Galvo's wrist away from him. A fiery blast roared from the barrel propelling a huge .45 caliber slug at 1200 feet per second. It smashed through the fuel pressure flow indicator on the instrument panel, just above the co-pilot’s steering yoke. It ripped a gash through the back of the NAVCOM radio. It severed an oil line. The bullet, now expanded due to its travel through everything else, punched a gaping hole in the aluminum housing of the turbo. The whine from the damaged rotary parts of the turbo was deafening. Black smoke billowed out of the engine. For an instant, everything stopped. For an instant, there was no fighting, no kicking, no gnashing of teeth, no cursing, no gunshots. Only for an instant.

  Then the killer, with the eyes of a monster, a demon, pushed and punched at Galvo with insanity. He even let go of Galvo's gun hand, because Galvo was going fast now. More of the killer's body slid out through the open door. He was head down, on his back, with the wheel strut under his right armpit. The small lollipop-like entry step was under the right cheek of his buttocks. His legs from his knees down, were still inside the plane.

  Amazingly, life still ebbed inside Galvo, but barely. His eyes rolled around in their sockets. Galvo dropped the gun and went for his killer's left foot. He grabbed it. He got himself low on the seat and pushed, straining, face red.

  The last thing the killer remembered was raising his right leg and hooking his foot on the co-pilot’s steering yoke. As he slipped off the step and began his free fall, his foot jerked the yoke and the plane rolled violently to the right again. The plane was on its side. Galvo, on his chest lying across both seats, shot forward. His left hand grabbed the left edge of the door opening. His right hand grabbed the right side of the opening. In a flash, the shiny aluminum box slid right out the door of the plane. It tumbled end-over-end, flipping like a metal playing card toward the slime below. Galvo uttered nothing. Not a sound, but his eyes said it all.

  Somewhere, in a brightly lit part of the quiet Glades, a human form splashed lifelessly into a canal of black water. A large alligator instinctively slid into the rippling water from the muddy banks.

  Elsewhere in the Glades, in a small hardwood grove of trees, something else fell from the heavens. An offering in a metal box. Payment, if you will, for witnessing the violence that took place within the prehistoric tabernacle.

  Galvo weakly pushed and pulled himself back into the plane. And as soon as he did, he took the pilot's controls and righted the wings.

  Malcolm's vision vanished again.

  Four

  The single-engine Zephyr, an economical four seat light plane, was small in the blue sky somewhere over the Glades.

  A little old man was at the controls. He had a severely receding hairline with clumps of hair on the sides of his head. The hair on top had been replaced by liver spots long ago. They matched the ones on his forehead, forearms and the back of his hands. He wore a button-down shirt with lots of pencils and pens in the left breast pocket. He peered through dark green aviator sunglasses. He slouched over a little in the seat, but his arms were rigid on the steering yoke, as if he were on a roller coaster. The plane flew perfectly level. It would have even if he had let go. It was a very forgiving, easy-to-fly, family type aircraft. And he knew it well. He had owned this same plane for more than thirty-two years now.

  His name was George. And George seemed to be oblivious to everything. He just stared straight ahead at the distant horizon. He didn't even hear the droning of his plane. And what he was trying not to hear was the droning of Margaret, his wife. Margaret had a habit of droning on incessantly. About anything. About everything. One never had to say anything in a conversation with Margaret. Or could say anything. She took care of both sides of a two-person conversation very handily. It was a well-known fact at the Estero Baptist Church Ladies Auxiliary Committee meetings, that the one voice you could count on hearing was Margaret's.

  In recent years, George had begun thinking that Margaret must be a reincarnated hen. The clack and cluck of her chatter sounded like a chicken, he thought. She even resembled a chicken at times. Her nose wasn't large, but it hooked out from her large, white, rhinestone studded sunglasses like the beak of a champion layer. Her white hair was beehived up on top of her head like a cockscomb. It shook constantly as she pecked her way through subject after subject.

  "And did you see how ridiculous Harriet looked last night? Well, I declare. The nerve of her to show up in such a low-cut dress. At her age. Dressin' like she was nineteen. Gosh a’ mighty, she looks ninety, not nineteen. Who would want to look at her anyway? I think everyone at the party thought she was downright revolting. Everyone, that is, except you, George. I saw you looking at Harriet's, how do you say it, décolletage? She hasn't got anything I haven't got, George, maybe even less! How does anybody really know for sure? She has so many curves and rolls how could anybody tell what’s real and what isn't? But everyone seemed to have a good time, don't you think George?"

  She started to unfold a map of Florida in front of her, almost filling the tiny cockpit of the plane with it. She didn't miss a beat of her pratter. "I'm so glad we decided we should go down to the convention this year George, aren't you? Even though we're retired now, I think there were a lot of car dealers there who were happy to see us, don't you think? We've made a lot of friends over the years."

  "Now, let's see where we are, George." She pointed at a spot on the map. "We left Key West at what time, ten o'clock? Yes, it was ten o'clock. Now that's a strange place. You can have it. Maybe that's what happened to Harriet. All those loose, beatniks, peaceniks, and you-know-whatniks had an effect on her."

  She went on. "Then we flew up the Keys. I just love the Keys, don't you George?" He didn't flinch. "Up past Marathon - that was a big one - over Duck Key, I hear there's a nudist colony on Duck Key, but I didn't see any nudists, did you George? Maybe Harriet's down there!" She laughed. George didn't.

  She traced the journey with her finger on the map. "Past Islamorada and just at the tip of Key Largo, we turned left toward the mainland, just ten miles over water. You know how I have a phobia about flying over water. I just can't stand to fly over water, George. If we had gone straight to Estero from Key West, we would have flown a hundred miles over water, George. A hundred miles! Over water! No way. Not for me.”

  M
argaret continued. "Then we flew in a straight line from Key Largo. Right through the middle of . . . of nothing, George. That makes me nervous! At least we'll be over land the rest of the way home. But George, there's absolutely nothing down there. It's scary looking down there! When you stop to think about it, this is no better than being over water. If we go down here, George, I don't think they would ever find us. We should have just flown over the highway. I know, I know George, a lot of extra flying, extra gas, more air traffic...more time with me is probably why you wanted to take the shorter way home, isn't it George? Admit it. How's our gas? Haven't we got plenty, George? I mean, we did plan it out. Let's just hope nothing goes wrong. And let's never, never, never fly over this place again. Why do you think they call it the Everglades, George? There's just nothing down there but trees. Absolutely nothing but............great God Almighty! Have pity on their souls! George, stop the plane! I mean, ah, turn around, make a turn!"

  George looked at Margaret.

  "There's a plane down there, George! A crashed plane!"

  George banked the plane to the left.

  He made a descending spiral to give them a better view of what Margaret said she had seen.

  "Over there, George, over there to the right! Turn right!"

  George banked the low-wing aircraft sharply to the right to give them a good view. As they pivoted over the wreckage on the tip of their right wing, Margaret said, "Holy God."

  George said, "Holy shit."

  Five

  Malcolm looked dead. His body was leaning against the plane in the shade under the wing. He was hunched over, chin against his chest. He started moving his head slightly every now and then. Even if he were awake, fully awake, he would have no idea where he was. He was barely alive at the edge of more than ten thousand square miles of dense flora and slithering fauna. One continuous, enormous tangle of steamy thickets, impenetrable vines, poisonous and thorny plants, poisonous snakes and spiders…even poisonous toads and caterpillars. The moist, thick air was made even thicker with endless swarms of huge black mosquitoes. It was a jungle to be sure, cut in crazy patterns of brown, green and black natural canals. Countless overstuffed prehistoric alligators, mouths agape, sank into the mud at the edges of still lagoons. It was as if the Everglades were endless primordial green slime, left to itself since time began, with an electric broiler directly overhead.