Chapter 10 Flight!

By Gary O'Brien

Well the whole thing pretty much had backfired. There we were walking down I Drive, trying to hail a cab or otherwise make it back to the hotel without getting arrested as the police were obviously out looking for us. The sirens could be heard for miles in the direction of the night club which was now closing down. Sick Willie must have been laughing his ass off.
Both of us were still pretty drunk, but recovering.
Chris was sweating buckets. He kept lighting smokes to overcome the exhaustion and by now I was smoking too. I had become the bastard all over again.
“I must say Gary, this has been an evening to remember. We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Fucking hell this was a blast, man. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun.”
When I checked his face for a genuine reaction, it occurred to me that he did in fact have one hell of a good time. Did he get punched? Yes but not seriously. Did he get ripped? That too. Did he get a phone number? Absolutely.
But more important to him, obviously was the weight now gone from his shoulders. For one moment he forgot about all of his troubles; every lingering worry about his wagon of debt was swept entirely away thanks to the alcohol, the herbal supplements and the weed. The near sex on the dance floor got his heart pumping and the fight and expulsion just clarified everything, made him feel alive. He probably hasn’t had so much adrenaline running through his system since his days in the South African Army.
“Speckled Lady on Crack”, or “Can’t You See”, whatever you wanted to call it, apparently the results of the concoction of nicotine, weed, herbals, and alcohol varied from person to person. Given the right mix, Chris becomes a happy warrior. How can you argue with that?
And now his mind was clear. Now he was relaxed and walking along dirty, dusty I-Drive. It was August in Florida, sometime around 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning. The accumulated heat of the day was still pulsing off the oil-soaked road. The dry sound of palmetto and pines whispering in the scattered eddied breezes, brought up by each passing vehicle that whizzed by, each in-turn ignoring the two, stumble bums along the thoroughfare, hypnotized as we were in our semi-slumbering trek. Chris waited for the bow wake from a truck to subside, then lit another smoke.
“Down to my last match,” he said.
“What happened to your lighter?”
“ …fuck should I know?”
Chris was bathing in it all; all this Florida essence, this dusty, late-night, post-fight stupidity. It occurred that this was his introduction to Central Florida. Maybe this is what he thought we Central Floridians did to pass the time. If so, I was making a hearty showing and it obviously impressed him. He had no idea I began the evening trying to set him up for a fall.
I vowed that however our relationship evolved from here on out, it would be awhile before I tried to dissuade him of any strange notions I had given him about Florida or Floridians. It was just too priceless; too funny. Let him go on thinking we were all barbarians; the worst sort of heathen scum.
I also decided there would be no way I would attempt to do him in again, either. We had survived battle together. Whether we liked it or not, we were now lifelong buddies; damned near brothers.
For my part, I never wanted to see so much violence all at once, ever again. The idea that I would kill anyone was about as remote to me at that moment as the isle of Malta.
I reached into my pocket and discovered I had lost my wallet in the scuffle somewhere but fortunately my Cuban flash roll had not been in it, and more than $300 remained, neatly tucked inside the other pocket.
But I mentioned it anyway. “Shit. They have my wallet. My driver’s license…my credit cards,” I continued.
“Thought all that was maxed out?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I admitted, wondering precisely how he knew this. “Yeah, it is. They are, but what about the cops?”
“Cops?”
“Well, you said so yourself: that one bouncer was messed up pretty bad. You know someone went to the hospital. If someone found my wallet at the scene or my DL, well, I’m fucked!”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Gary, if I were you,” Naughten lied.
“Why the hell not?”
“Well it was all self-defense wasn’t it? You didn’t do anything wrong but try to defend yourself, which I will vouch for, and I didn’t do anything wrong, which you will vouch for. How is it the gangsters say it? ‘I got your back G!’”
I said nothing to this fairy tale. We were fucked.
Chris clacked open his cell, took out a crumpled napkin and began dialing.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling for help.”
I was too tired to fight with him. He began with “Hello, darling; it’s me. Your new lover.”
“What?…what?” Then turning to me, “She’s crying…”
“Let me guess…”
“What? What? It’s me, we met tonight at …right. Right.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said again.
“…well how is he? Oh shit. Really?”
“Let me guess,” I said again.
Naughten looked over at me and gave me a thumbs up. “Good going man!”
“How about the other one? Really? ….wow.”
“The one named Dave is in a coma!” he said again with a wink.
“Let me fucking guess…”
“Her boyfriend Tony has a concussion, sprained his neck. Not paralyzed though…just in hospital. Looks like he’ll be okay. Out of work for a couple weeks.”
“Fucking splendid.”
“They’re blaming Dave on us. Tony’s not saying a word to anyone.”
“But of course.”
“What….? Us? No we can’t get a Taxi, love. I need a ride. I’m not made for this heat…”
“Don’t do it, Chris. Just hang up the damned phone, please.”
“Oh…we’re somewhere walking on something called I-Drive, looks like a Chili’s and, and McDonald’s up ahead. Hello? Hello? The phone went dead. Must be the battery.”
“Right…you know, buddy, for someone as worldly as you are, you’re blind when it comes to women.”

*
After the third set of police cars passed, we nudged ourselves around the sleeping bums in the alley and clambered onto the locked bait freezer. I don’t know whether it actually had bait in it, but this was similar to the gigantic freezers I had visited so often in North Carolina during summer trips with Leslie and the kids.
You go in and buy the two and three-ounce bottom weight because you’re trying to hook a real fighter Puppy Drum as they are called. You grab yourself the “fish finder” clasp, then a couple circle hooks, then you get your cut bait out of the freezer, weigh it in the bag, come back inside with fish stink all of your hands and pay the man at the counter. Then off you go.
I would have liked to have been in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, somewhere in Buxton, or Avon at that moment, buying bait; some good ole stinky Menhaden preferably, or some of those nice long shrimp they get up there come summertime. I would have liked to have been at Avon Pier, rummaging through a grand old bait freezer like the one I was standing on at that moment, digging for a plastic container of blood worms. I would rather have been standing on Frisco Pier in the middle of a hurricane than where I was, on that freezer fighting to get over that chain link fence crowned with a daunting little segment of razor wire with Mr. Chris Naughten in tow, somewhere in Orlando, Florida.
Naughten could not stop laughing. The idea that police were now actively searching for us, and homing in, was about as amusing to him at this moment as a group of grandmothers relieving themselves on Grand pianos.
The object, at the moment, was to clamber over this malicious section of fence and lower ourselves down into an equally malicious looking patch of yard, peppered with unfriendly bits of pipe, flash molding from a long-ago construction project, rusting canisters of something or other, and shards of broken glass. From there it was through an industrial looking warehouse facility of indeterminate, yet porous nature. I had no doubt there was a vicious dog on the premises somewhere, given that Mr. Murphy was now out in force, along with a bright full moon. One could see a stand of trees through the open windows and walls of the warehouse. If we made it to the woods, well there was still a chance we could get out of this mess.
Naughten was tiring of the game but not giving up. He needed a rest for a moment. He leaned back against the brick wall of the 7-11 as I surveyed the lay of the land. Going back out on the street was a no-no. They now had us on camera inside the 7-11 as Naughten had so thoughtfully decided he needed a wine cooler or two, and a shit to break up the monotony of being chased by the cops for more than 45 minutes now. It was 2:57 a.m.
It wouldn’t be long before someone of authority was reviewing those tapes. My paranoia wouldn’t yet let me believe the tapes were instantly reviewed by FBI agents and Orlando police in a control facility somewhere, but it was bubbling to that.
The sickly sweet smell of dope hit my nostrils. Naughten was burning again.
“I see you’ve managed to steal a pack of matches from the 7-11,” I said.
“Actually, it was a lighter, as well the Zig-Zags. I figured what the hell.”
“True,” I said. “Why not.”
“Now you’re talking, Gary. Here. Why not.”
And I did. I hit that joint like Johnny skips school. Then I bashed back half a pink wine cooler. He had thoughtfully stolen two for each of us, after he used the 7-11’s plumbing.
“Tastes like elephant piss mixed with Sprite, I know,” he said. “But it’s refreshing. And we needed to re-hydrate, Gary. You know I’m right.”
“Indeed.”
“What do you think?” he said dryly, bending over and letting out such a long belch it nearly woke the bums. Then came a little something extra, which he wiped off his chin with a swipe from his shirt.
“About what?”
Then another long, lazy, watery belch and a hit on the joint.
“About our current predicament, naturally.”
“Well I don’t want to be overly pessimistic, Chris, but we’re still fucked and then some although…”
“Aha…” he said raising a hand. He was now a schoolmaster. I had just discovered something wise and deep and he was proud of me.
“Ah…” he said again, but this degenerated into a full on blast of vomit, showering the alley. And now even the bums could smell it.
“Ah…” he intoned deeply, gravely as Winston Churchill and the showering sound returned in earnest, the million spatter of acidic raindrops.
“Please don’t do that again,” I said.
“If it can be arranged. I will, of course….comply”
He couldn’t. “Ah……aaaaaaaaaalllghghghhghghgh,” accompanied the hiss of vomit.
“That’s quite some volume you’re working off there, Chris.”
“Almost there,” he said.
And once again.
“Gott daimn, mother fucker, will you cut that shit out?” went one of the bums.
“You were saying,” Chris said, wiping off his chin for, hopefully, the last time this evening.
“What?”
“During every hopeless situation in battle or otherwise, there comes a tiny keyhole of opportunity. I detected in your voice that you had found ours.”
“Aside from the fact…”
“That they have not called out close air support? Yes, I realize that and even with infrared, this soffett above our heads covers us for now…”
“Yes,” I continued. “Aside from the fact no helicopter has arrived, it looks like this old lumber yard or whatever leads to some woods. If we can make it to that…”
“We’ll have to time it, Gary.”
“What?”
“After a while they’ll get sick of not finding us. They will search those woods. The only question is, will they do so before they look here, or after? There’s our keyhole, my good lad. If we storm through now, they’ll catch us straight away, having gone where and when they expect to find us. If we wait, there’s a fifty-fifty chance they’ll choose the woods first and make their way round back here second.”
“So we should wait, Sgt. Major?”
“Right, until the lights scan the woods first, then we make our move. By the time they get here, we’ll be gone.”
And sure enough, he was right. A helicopter flew over. Men scoured the bushes. Lights jabbed the air for the better part of a half an hour, dying away and moving off.
“Now would be the time,” he said.
An old, maggot-infested rug was used to lay down the razor wire and over we went into the yard.
I’m not sure why there was no dog. There should have been. I fully expected one, almost missed the fullness of experience that a vicious attack dog would have lent to the proceedings. But there was not. The yard, or former lumberyard was largely abandoned of anything of worth. Even we didn’t rate a bark or nip as we stumbled through.
The sound of a Crown Victoria engine revving through the close streets spurred us on. As predicted, the cops were done with the woods. Now they were heading to the other side of the block, to the 7-11 and the alley between it and the run-down little strip of stores hard by.
They should have proceeded backward through the lumberyard, first, and they would have caught us. Just as Chris predicted, they didn’t. Call it a 3 a.m. lapse in logic.
We dashed across the open field of broken bits, glass, busted PVC pipe and flash-molding toward the flimsy awning of the lumber yard, The helicopter had its eyes trained downward on the cop vehicle, along with a huge spot light. Another stroke of luck.
Chris leaned against a pylon inside the covered area for another respite.
“The beauty is,” he said, followed by three long breaths. “They won’t think to check the woods again. They’ll assume….they’ll assume…(breath) we beat them through and we’re long gone.”
“That is if they don’t think to check the videotape of the 7-11,” I said.
“Bravo. (breath) Good point, Gary. I didn’t think about that…(gasp) the video will have the precise time on it, naturally.”
Chris went to take out a cigarette and I took the pack from him.
“Not until we’re out of this. Christ, you’re about ready to keel over. You need your wind,” I said.
“Understood,” he said, slowing his breathing.
The high-pitched whine of dirty brakes on a large vehicle mingled with the sound of screeching tires. The sliding sound of a van door on runners hit the night through the alley. There was another whining sound; a decidedly unwelcome one, the cautious concerned whine of a dog being let out into unfamiliar territory. A K-9 unit had just arrived. Our glimmering keyhole of luck was threatening to slam shut.
I had asked for a dog from the great universal creature and he complied. I really had no call to complain.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Roger that.”
I jammed my shoulder against corrugated aluminum siding to open a hole for Chris and I to pass through and sliced my left arm in the process. Damn it hurt. Behind me I could hear the dogs scent and begin rousting the vagrants in the alley. A spike of pity registered. These two men did not get a break from the trials of the road this evening, having been vomited on, now rousted by police dogs.
In the dryness of the warm summer air, you could hear all.
“Damn your sumbitch ass, they just went over the damned fence. It ain’t us. It ain’t us! Damnit all! Owwwwww! Get him off me!”
“More comedy,” said Naughten, clutching at his gut. He couldn’t laugh anymore. “I don’t know how much of this I can take.”
“Chris wait ‘till we’re safe before you start laughing again, Jesus!”
“Right. Sorry,” and with that he really did seem better there for a while, more awake and diligent about what was happening.
We cut through the woods with very little trouble. A couple of scrapes on the shins from downed pine branches, a cut or two on the neck and chest from clinging vines but otherwise it went rather smoothly, taken in all. Skirting back yards and low chain link fences, we were greeted with the snarling fangs of three pit bulls in one yard, which didn’t help our situation in that it gave the dogs chasing us a target.
But our brilliant ray of luck was holding. One of the bright bulbs in command of the task force searching for us decided that his team’s efforts needed to be focused on the lumberyard. Every resource was used to cover every inch of a hiding place we had already abandoned. It bought us perhaps two minutes of lead-time as the helicopter wheeled above scanning every rotten woodpile.
Chris and I knifed through a Florida Power and Light easement, crossed the street and through the next series of yards along a drainage canal. We followed it behind the yards to the right parallel with the street we had just crossed but behind the residential properties. Cop cars were whizzing around back and forth on that street as police had discovered the hole in the back wall of the lumberyard awning and our little hastily beaten trail through the adjoining woods. Miraculously the helicopter hovered over the woods near the lumberyard, again, right over the officers and dogs in foot pursuit.
You could hear the animals fighting their chains yelping in bitter disappointment. They knew where we were if the men didn’t. If someone had thought to cut the dogs loose, they would have had us, again, within two minutes. They didn’t.
“How …long….do…we let this go on, Gary,” Naughten finally said with a smile. His hands were on his knees.
“This is getting…pretty harry my friend.”
We stood in complete darkness shielded by cheap clapboard fencing to our right, a dark deep drainage ditch to our left with another wooded area beyond.
“Do we cut over…. to those woods?” he asked.
“Dunno. Maybe we should see where this leads. Get more distance,” I said, indicating the path rimming the long ditch.
“Right.”
We came to the end of the neighborhood. The drainage ditch entered a tunnel leading beneath the intersecting street.
“We’ve got to go under,” I said.
“Naturally, they won’t suspect that,” Naughten said, breathing a little easier once again.
It was completely foul. The muck and water slurped into our shoes, filled our socks, ran up to our knees. Rats squeaked and scurried along the walls.
The echoes of thudding helicopter blades were amplified ten-fold down the long pipe. It passed directly above, vectoring out on its own no doubt. Several times we bunged our heads on the corrugated ribs of the sewer. One hundred yards later we emerged in a thicket of cat tales and water lilies. The mud was getting deeper. We clambered up the left bank through thick grass. The helicopter was searching the woods on the opposite side of the road.
“Through here,” I said.
There was a large open lot rimmed with bushes and trees on the far side, about a quarter mile away. On the other side of that was an apartment complex, generic and brightly lit.
The police continued scouring the woods. It was the first time it occurred to me we might get away.
We cut through the parking lot beneath the blazing halogens. The lot was gray-white like the surface of the moon, covered in yellow lines, half-filled to capacity with dark Saturns, Sunfires and other boxy, generic, office sedans. They weren’t rich, these people; but some were still awake.
Wordlessly Chris and I clambered over the smooth, black cage that surrounded the postage stamp of a swimming pool. The shoulder high cage rimmed the pool jealously and looked more expensive than the cement hole filled with impossibly blue Gatorade, itself. That you needed a key to get in was more than a punch line.
The water felt good, though. It was chilly and cleansing. We needed to get some of the mud and blood off of us if we were to make a presentation back though the front door of the hotel, at least an appearance that did not give us away. Chris had the idea that he would complain bitterly about being doused by the hotel sprinkler system.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked.
“None.” I said.
By 4 a.m. we had finished washing the mud off from our horrific slog through woods, yards, canals and whatnot.
The noise from our pursuers died down after a while letting us know that they had moved off elsewhere. We were about ready to cautiously approach the street again to gain our bearings when another stroke of luck came our way.
Three party girls from either UCF or Stetson University bailed out of a cab that entered the complex down the alcove.
Chris and I sauntered over to the cab and physically hemmed him in by standing behind him, demanding audience with the driver before he could evaporate into the night.
Soaking wet as we were he didn’t want to take us anywhere at first. It took $100, which I had, plus downright begging before he agreed. Within fifteen minutes we were outside the hotel.
Naughten lied to the doorman that we had been at a wild party where everyone had been thrown into the water. The doorman had a bellhop grab us some towels and in we went like a charm. Naughten offered to loan me a set of clean clothes for my drive home and I agreed.
After I showered we inspected my sliced arm. It looked damned bad, as if some of the dirt from the canal could already be in there, doing its dirty work. My brain immediately seized the idea of necrotizing fasciitis, the bacterial disease that devours flesh a little bit at a time.
Chris opened up the mini-bar and we poured scotch into my wound as an antiseptic. The clot washed away and it bled before drying again.
I was wearing his clothes. He was feeling comfortable enough to don a wife beater T-shirt and a pair of silk boxers. After dabbing off my wound a little, we poured ourselves two snifters of Grand Marinier. He managed to scrounge another bag of weed from somewhere, and of course we smoked. He was a pharmacological wonder this Chris Naughten. Reminded me of a guy I knew in college who was never to be found without his bag of weed.
We spoke for a while about his native land, how much he missed it, how lovely it was and so forth.
“Gary, let’s have a look at what you’ve written here,” he said suddenly, ripping open the envelope on the bed. I tried weakly to stop him and as a result some of my blood spatter from my wound got on the title page when it came spilling out onto the bed with the rest of the manuscript.
“That’s bloody priceless,” Naughten said of the blood stain just below the words The Dead Agent. “You should leave it. Drive the point home. Gary O’Brien’s angry, world! Look out!”
After getting through the first five pages, Naughten did me a huge honor and said he wanted to stay up and read more of it. He liked it. I was welcome to drift off to sleep in the recliner. I said it would be good to grab a few winks before driving back to the coast.
And so it went, I drifted off with the sound of him chuckling every so often, leafing the pages as he went.
I heard him mutter: “Not very nice to the little people, are we, Gary?”
“What can I say,” I slurred in my sleep. “I am a true coward.”