With the help of beautiful Rose Becker, Max Brady takes on greedy Fort Lauderdale developers and politicians intent on nabbing beachfront properties by any means necessary, even arson and murder.
Excerpt
*Words and sentences between two asterisks are italicized in the actual book *
Chapter One
On a moonless morning so black even the shadows seemed to cast shadows, a tall, sleek figure glided through the inky stillness, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a blue canister in either hand. In the distance, he heard waves lap sleepily onto a beach and palm fronds whispering in the breeze, sounds normally pleasing to him. But his mood was dismal as a swamp.
*What the fuck am I doing here?*
He slipped through a swinging wooden gate into the courtyard of the Pelican’s Nest Motel, feeling the pitchdark air, bleak and ominous as night-ocean water. The trespasser darted around patches of pink neon light cast by the lazy blinks of a Vacancy sign, ducked beneath a staircase, and stood stock still, waiting for his irises to adjust to the black velvet shadows. The motel was asleep and he felt invisible, his only witness a pair of stars winking overhead, watching down on him like a barn owl from the rafters. For an instant he smelled perfume, then realized it was the thick saccharine scent of jasmine-like flowers rotting in a graveyard. He fought off a momentary nausea. Then the answer hit him.
*Money.*
Lithe as a cat, the black-clad man bound up the stairs and moved along a rail overlooking a swimming pool and thatched tiki bar. It was October, still the slack season. Fort Lauderdale hadn’t yet been invaded by vacationers seeking spiritual resuscitation from surf, sun, and sand. The motel’s second floor was unoccupied. He put down the containers outside Room 15 and deftly picked the lock, which gave a dull report and the door sighed open. Stepping inside, he pulled the drapes together and flipped on the television for light, revealing a garden variety Florida motel room; light, airy, clean as a new car. He thought of the dingy room he rented, with its Salvation Army décor and reek of disinfectant. *Rat’s Nest.*
“Now here’s the 4 a.m. update on Hurricane Phyllis.” The television was tuned to the Weather Channel, the sound just loud enough to hear. The intruder turned and listened. “Phyllis is shaping up to be a storm of historic proportions as it bears down on the Yucatan Peninsula. The National Hurricane Center reports that a hurricane hunter aircraft has flown into Phyllis’s four mile wide eye and measured winds of 150 miles per hour. Barometric pressure is a record low 882 milibars, an incredible 100 points below what it was this time yesterday. At this point the storm track is quite wobbly, but all indications are it will hit Cozumel and Cancún within the next twelve hours.”
*Poor fucking Mexicans,* thought the man in black.
“Computer projections,” the weatherman said, “indicate that after she passes the Yucatan, Phyllis will loop north and east and gain strength as she heads toward South Florida.”
*Good for business.* He lowered the sound and opened his bag–a physician preparing for surgery. He pulled out a hotplate and set it on a white rattan table. Crumpling newspaper, spreading it around the room, his mind wandered away from Phyllis to the motel’s owners. He’d been watching them surreptitiously for a week. Old bald guy and blonde wife. *Little long in the tooth, but firm body. Nice tits. I’d hit her.*
He removed a hand auger from the bag and soundlessly bored holes in the baseboards on either side of the room, then threaded plastic tubing through each hole. With little effort, he lifted one of the blue containers, attached the spout to the flanged end of a tube, poured liquid into the adjacent room, and repeated the process on the opposite wall. The remaining fluid he splashed on the beds and walls as casually as if he was watering flowers. He set the second blue canister on the hot plate and switched the burner to high, then opened the drapes and slipped from the room as silent as fog.
Five minutes later, he was sitting in a stolen car half a block away, tense, still as a statue, staring anxiously through the blackness, stony eyes locked on Room 15’s big plate glass window, counting down mutely.
3, 2, 1…
An orange fireball erupted followed by a dull whomp. He held his breath, watching flames climb the walls, black smoke billowing from the white door jamb. The fire quickly spread into the rooms next door. The picture window facing the courtyard burst and, within two minutes, the entire second floor of the Pelican’s Nest was ablaze. Tongues of flame broke through the roof and licked at the black sky, red sparks dancing in the air like a swarm of lightning bugs.
“Fire!” someone shouted.
A man in a robe blew into the courtyard, swift as a gust of wind. The bald motel owner. He began pounding on doors.
“Fire,” he hollered. “Everyone out.”
Guests rushed into the night wearing pajamas and nightgowns, some wrapped in blankets. The motel owner twisted the nozzle of a garden hose and tried to douse the flames, but the water pressure was too feeble to reach the roof. He dropped the hose, grabbed a bucket, and plunged it into the swimming pool, then raced up the staircase, and heaved water at the blaze. He might as well have spit. He ripped off his robe and beat at the fire.
*Old codger’s got balls,* the arsonist thought, watching from the street, captivated by the drama he’d ignited. He saw a woman dash up the stairs, the blonde wife, her breasts bouncing inside the robe like desperately beating hearts. She reached her husband and wrestled him away from the inferno.
Sirens were soon wailing and flashing lights replaced the darkness. Two red ladder trucks roared up and firefighters were quickly attacking the flames with high pressure streams of foam retardant. But too late. The building was burning like a tinderbox.
*Crackhead would be proud.* The arsonist snorted, the stolen car’s engine thrumming smoothly at idle. *Crackhead! The pervert would be cranking his shank at a hundred miles an hour right now.*
Then the first squad car screeched up to the scene.
*Time to go.*
Copyright 2008 Joseph Collum. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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