Lowering the loaded gun from his temple, Randall Lark removed his finger from the trigger and opened his eyes.

The suicide note said this:

“I will be the last person to die by my hand. I am sorry for everything. You should be, too.”

With trembling hands Randall stuffed the paper and the gun into the deep pocket of his purple board shorts he bought and wore when he taught himself to surf at the north end of the beach at the double-sandbar beach break known as 880. Driving to the beach now he thought about the vacationing brother he met there one morning who laughed and told him Blacks don’t surf.

Blacks don’t what?

This Black man planned to break more than a few unwritten rules in whatever time he had left on this sad, endangered planet.

But he wouldn’t kill Marty Durkin.

People back home on the block in Philly expected him to have already killed the ex-cop and turn the gun on himself. Murder/suicide happens all the time. Anybody who knew Randall Lark knew he’d take a lot of mental pressure before reacting but once he moved on you there was no turning back.

Kill Randall’s baby brother and die. Everybody knew a date with the reaper was set in stone – as in headstone – as soon as that New Jersey cop killed baby Tyrone in what cops called an accident. Yeah, everybody knew a bullet was headed his way. Randall fully expected to ice that honky-assed Jersey cracker. Then he’d ice himself. Put an end to suffering for Durkin and himself.

But the cold metal barrel against his head only made Randall think about life and living as best he could to honor his parents, to honor the memory of Tyrone, to honor the memory of the little boy he couldn’t save from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Instead he’d hunt down and haunt Durkin wherever he went. Shadow him into guilty mental submission. Drown him beneath the weight of a culpable conscience like a walking, talking “psyop,” that stands for psychological operation, the savage American CIA and military tactic that plays with people’s heads and drives them crazy.

He’d love for Durkin to lose his mind and decide to kill himself. That would be just. But Randall’s conscience told him that was wrong. Getting even didn’t make life better. Revenge showed weakness. Vengeance wasn’t his, sayeth the Randall. Thinking such thoughts made him laugh. Randall never saw himself as any prince of peace but peace was the answer. Calm discipline showed strength. Randall needed Black power now more than ever.

Soothing rays of sunshine warmed him as he paddled his surfboard far enough into the Gulf of Mexico to dump the note and the gun into deep water. When he sensed the rise of a two-foot wave, he got unsteadily to his feet and rode the small swell into shallow water before stepping off.

Ruby Arenas had been watching from the shore ever since finishing her morning swim. She, too, liked the isolation of the north beach as long as she got there ahead of the surfers and could enjoy the water that embraced and taught her everything she needed to know about life and death. She had spotted the surfer on her way in and wondered why he had paddled out so far. Then she recognized him.

Randall looked down at the sand when she approached him.

“I was worried about you,” she said. “You were out so far anything can happen.”

“You were out pretty far yourself,” he said. “Then you dove and didn’t surface.”

“I’m a good underwater swimmer,” she said.

Beads of sweat wet their bare shoulders beneath the yawning apricot sun.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“Cool,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“You, know, getting by.”

“You’re not wearing your COVID mask,” Randall said.

“We’re outside,” Ruby said. “Mother Nature’s looking after me and keeping us at a distance.”

Laughing together they sat on the sand facing a brightening sky, Randall stretching out long legs, Ruby pulling hers to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees. A long minute passed in silence.

“Durkin told us about your brother. Were you really going to kill him the other night at RayRay’s?” Ruby asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I hate guns,” she said.

“Me, too,” Randall said. “That’s why I paddled out and threw away my gun.”

“Peace of mind is good,” Ruby said.

“Easier said than done,” Randall said.

Ruby felt embarrassed but said what she’d been thinking ever since she first met Randall.

“You called me sister when I served you,” she said. “I never thought of myself as Black.”

“I think too much about it,” Randall said.

“About me being Black?” she asked.

“No, me,” he said.

Again they laughed, feeling closer in their simple admission that opened each one to the other. Sitting in silence, they watched two dolphins surface and dive about 50 yards from shore, swimming beneath a flock of gulls that flew so close together their wings seemed to touch like angels playing tag in the sky.

“What’s the difference between a person of color and a Black person?” Ruby asked.

“We’re all people of color,” Randall said. “Except white people.”

“We’re both Black?” Ruby asked.

“We’re both Black,” Randall said.

“My Cuban father’s skin looked like a piece of Werther’s Original candy,” Ruby said. “My Mexican mother’s skin was dark as chocolate mole sauce. I look like molasses.”

“Nothing wrong with brown sugar brown, sister,” Randall said.

Randall and Ruby laughed again, louder this time, feeling closer with each small wave that washed gently over the sand.

“They tell me it’s a free country,” Randall said. “Call yourself whatever you like. Just don’t call yourself white.”

Ruby looked deep into Randall’s eyes that shined like vibrant black coral.

“I’m also a witch, you know,” she said.

“Black magic?” Randall asked.

Smelling like a slice of sugar-coated gummy orange candy, citrus scented fumes wafted from Florida First Lady Jenna DeShifty’s deep perfumed cleavage like heat waves snaking off freshly poured Alligator Alley asphalt on a bare stretch of I-75.

Shaking her orange short shorts encased booty while lining up a golf ball for a drive, she wriggled one last time. Using an orange polished pinkie to push back a dangling lock of dyed strawberry blond hair, Jenna jiggled one more time. Then she squirmed again, like a shiver or a conniption fit, just for good measure.

Even in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Jenna needed to get a golf club in her hands to keep up her image as a doting athletic wife, fundraiser and Christian among the fawning fans of non-thinking women who could not care less about patriarchy, oligarchy and right-wing anarchy. So Jenna hit the links with hubby governor Ronnie for a volunteer recruitment “drive” to call attention to the needs of the poor who lost everything in the historic storm.

One long drive to the fairway should do the trick. All Jenna needed to do was keep her eye on the ball, rear back and swing. Even a bad shot would serve her see-through altruistic purpose and allow the charity ladies, as she called her jewelry jiggling girlfriends, to feel philanthropic, fulfilled and convinced they truly cared about the downtrodden the way their personal savior Jesus wanted them to care.

“Those poor shrimp fishermen,” Jenna said. “I mean, shrimp cocktails are so necessary for on- the-go women like us to, like, I mean, to like, survive.”

Jenna often told female luncheon audiences how much she cared about women’s rights, regularly repeating how she once led a successful protest in high school to establish the first women’s varsity golf team which resulted in slashing the library budget. That victory prompted her in later life to call herself a “femalist” and campaign with her chauvinist pig sexist husband at women’s clubs that drew countless vacuous grand dames just like her, women who grazed across Florida like prime rib steers on farm-fed ranches that supplied America’s best beef.

The governor put up with Jenna even if she was a lousy duffer because she had memorized the first three chapters of Revelations from the Bible and could recite them at will at prayer breakfasts and the many anti-spay and neuter rallies she led because, like her husband, she opposed contraception even for stray cats.

Truth be told, though, Jenna and Ronnie believed only in the higher power of themselves.

“Always keep them guessing,” Ronnie often told his wife. “Life begins at deception.”

Russian thug Ivan Popov stood nearby leering and taking nips from a pint bottle of Smirnoff he pulled from the waistband of his mint green shorts covered by the tail of a periwinkle polo shirt. Billionaire brother Borys stood beside Governor Ronnie DeShifty who smiled and signed autographs for his biggest re-election donors, adding the flourish of a bold lightning bolt beneath his name that rivaled anything German SS officers engraved on their letterhead or rally flags.

The governor never let an opportunity to cash in pass so he had invited his biggest donors to attend Jenna’s volunteer reception drive. He’d make a killing in contributions while she offered condolences to unfortunate taxpayers and uninsured home owners ravaged by the latest Florida natural disaster.

“Charging $10,000 a hole is genius, your honor,” Borys said.

“With an extra hundred thousand contribution at the 19^th hole,” DeShifty said.

“I meet you at 19^th,” Ivan said with a wave before waddling off to the cabana bar where the after party meet-and-greet would commence and shifty campaign contributors would sign their biggest checks to DeShifty.

Sam Bennett and RayRay watched from behind a Golden Dewdrop bush with frilly purple flowers and golden berry clusters that fronted the clubhouse at the Mana Tee Off Golf Club, a private resort that catered to cigar-chomping men of the world whose conservative politics leaned to the right of the late Italian strongman Benito Mussolini.

“This is worse than when all the Mafia bosses met at that Apalachin summit in 1958,” RayRay said. “These are the wealthiest crooked businessmen in Florida with a sprinkling from Nevada and Pennsylvania.”

Sam glared.

“How dare they make fun of manatees by naming their club after my sweet sea cows,” Sam said. “Somebody needs to tee off on them.”

“Gulls, manatees, whatever,” RayRay said. “These boys are rich and comfortable enough to make fun of everything. They say they’re born again and specialize in meanness.”

“Thanks for wearing a mask,” Sam said.

“It makes it harder to put my face on a wanted poster, like yours,” RayRay said.

Sam sounded committed and calm.

“I need to make sure my exploding golf balls work,” Sam said.

As always, Sam had a plan.

A good bottle of extra-strength Dos Locos tequila easily persuaded Pancho, who drank at RayRay’s and worked washing dishes in the country club kitchen, to swipe the event guest list including mailing addresses for all well-heeled donors and do-gooder Republican women. Sam could send a special exploding golf ball to each highfaluting hotshot with the forged governor’s autograph inscribed on the ball. He also planned to surreptitiously scatter plain white exploding golf balls on golf courses throughout the state. He’d borrow RayRay’s car and enjoy a few days driving around scattering his special load.

Sam Bennett hated golfers.

Exploding golf balls would induce panic among upper and middle classes alike. Campaign donors would refuse to meet and play with DeShifty. A whole hierarchy of women’s clubs would steer clear of leisurely mornings, afternoons, tournaments and fundraisers. Those who braved the terror would risk coming face-to-face with balls that might blow up and set their leg hair on fire.

The press would go wild.

DeShifty would lose.

By terrorizing denizens of the green, Sam figured he’d be doing society a favor. Golf grabs duffers by the birdie worse than Catholicism, evangelism and circumcision. The game takes over the mind, offering obsessive appeal, working its way into even limited self-image and controlling spare time better spent on better endeavors.

Golf stole America’s working and middle class compass back in the 90s when blue-collar adults took up the game and taught their sons who quickly turned their backs on jobs as bricklayers, bakers, butchers, postal carriers, carpenters, laborers or even cops and firemen, resulting in this new breed of generation wanting “work” as financial advisors and stock brokers. Without experience these new golfers wanted jobs as insurance and real estate managers. Stock brokers, for Christ’s sake! These egotistical narcissistic and aspiring aristocrats expected to golf during the week with clients at country clubs and remain aloof from the maddening crowd.

Sam offered no mercy.

Some golfing exceptions exist but not many. Sam only knew one or two rare rugged golfers capable of going back to riding a soul-shaking Harley Davidson after putt-putt-putting around an immaculately manicured course like privileged patricians decked out in pastels and plush pomposity.

Crude as it sounds most golfers thought their feces didn’t fume which brings us back to First Lady Jenna DeShifty who was about to become Jenna DeShitty all over again.

Putting a finger to his waxy lips, the governor called for silence as Jenna lined up the drive. Wriggling and giggling, she called as much attention to herself as she could muster. The volunteer ladies beamed, watching with wonder at her self-confidence. Fat cat donors stared in awe of her waggle, a subtle butt shake Jenna practiced after seeing professional golfers shake their booty on TV to relax during a Pro-Am Tour.

Sam held his breath as Jenna prepared to slam the special golf ball he had hand-crafted. Pancho placed the special ball on top of the pile of balls in the bucket no questions asked in exchange for a happy hour’s worth of free tequila.

Sam had spray painted the ball hot pink, Jenna’s favorite color, and hand-inscribed her initials on the ball in gold paint. Even from a distance Sam could almost feel the ball’s pulse like it was alive, which wasn’t that far out scientifically or mechanically. Millions of tiny bacteria including swarming E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium (“Crypto” for short). and other grisly germ parasites crawled, paddled, dove, waded and glided around in the gull poop.

Sam had packed and jammed the ball so tightly with gull guano the round white bitter pill was all but ready to explode all by itself like the Big Bang that created the universe even without the help of a mini explosive detonator about to blast off on impact. Once again Jenna DeShifty was about to get the shitty end of the stick.

Holding with nine degrees of loft a $579.99 Taylor Made Stealth Driver she had received as a gift from the Fetus Power political action committee that worked to empower the unborn with all the rights of a human, including, credit cards, in-the-womb mortgage applications and scratch-off instant winner lottery tickets, Jenna stood with her brown and white saddle shoes one foot apart, lining up the special golf ball with her front heel.

Jenna gripped the club firmly but gently in order to hit the ball at a good, consistent distance. Jenna started her backswing, shifting her weight into what the governor called the honey buns of her tightened bottom.  Jenna kept the start of her downswing calm and unhurried at an easy pace so she could pick up speed before hitting the ball. This enables you to build up speed so that the golf club is still accelerating when it reaches the ball. Jenna swung in one single movement that utilized her entire body at the same time.

Despite all the practice, charm and poise, despite planning and privilege, destiny came her way.

First Lady Jenna DeShifty found herself shit out of luck.

The club hit the ball.

The shit hit the fairway.

The activated mulligan booby trap and subsequent ordure outbreak sent everybody running for cover. A few stalwart global business thieves reached for their handguns concealed in Velcro thigh holsters available in extra hefty sizes that could easily fit under the leg of any size Bermuda shorts. Others ran for their cars screaming for their drivers, worried that the Mexicans they saw in the kitchen might be part of a cartel specializing in kidnapping American business executives. At least one social media CEO hit the ground, expecting machine gun fire.

Otherwise uninjured, First Lady Jenna DeShifty dripped doo doo from head to toe, a victim of a gull lover’s irritable bowel syndrome turned irritable bomb syndrome.

If what’s done is done, so, too, is what’s dung is dung. Florida remains a mushrooming political madhouse fertilized with financial avarice, racial bigotry and flagrant stupidity. Societal Armageddon hangs in the balance.

Between Sam’s drone attacks and the exploding golf balls, he’d wake up the world.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has threatened to go nuclear.

Our hero went one better.

Sam Bennett went pooplear.

Rain felt like hornet stings on Sam Bennett’s face as he stood alone on the beach. The sky looked angry, more ominous than he ever remembered. Clouds climbed horizontally high into the sky clawing their way from the streaked horizon before curling and rolling like great mad tidal waves in the darkening atmosphere. Mother Nature conveyed her message loud and clear.

“Beware.

Get ready.

I’m just getting started.

Ian is my messenger.

Utter retribution is on the way.”

Sam knew disrespect goes only so far. Then you can get smacked. He saw the results in Florida barrooms all his drinking life. Somebody often gets smacked. Usually they deserve the slap.

Not wanting to hurt anybody, Sam plotted his next move in his lonely war against anyone who dared disrespect the earth. Whenever he decided on his next target, his handcarved gulls would do his bidding to save the planet.

Mankind wanted oil, gas, even coal and new styles of Lincoln cars. Mankind wanted bulky modern estates and mansions by the beach. Mankind wanted goods and products and merchandise all at nature’s expense. And mankind would pay, meeting extinction one day at the hands of fate with a little help from her friends. Mankind now punished the poor, the vulnerable and the weak. Sam needed to punish them but didn’t want to physically hurt anyone in the process. He just wanted to hurt their bank accounts. Call him naïve and insane. Call him deluded. Just don’t call him insincere.

Emergency responders had just started hurricane cleanup that morning. Sam weathered the rain and savage surges by constructing a basic shelter with his beloved gull drones in RayRay’s garage, hunkering down, holding out and holding his own, actually savoring the rush of wild wind in his face and the pounding of water all around, enjoying himself at one point so much he sang six words from the title of the 1970 B.J. Thomas song about raindrops falling on his head. Not everybody was so hearty or so lucky. As always in an extreme weather event some people lost everything.

Human attacks on the environment upset nature’s balance, heating the oceans and the Gulf, increasing the intensity of storms, escalating the amount of rainfall and propelling the ticking time bomb the globe had become.

So now what?

Exploding golf balls, that’s what.

With each ball containing an explosive charge sufficient to scare but not scar, Sam made good use of the detonators he impounded for the earthly revolution. Blowing up buildings was too easy. Making an original mark takes authentic creativity. And, if anybody exuded uniqueness, Sam Bennett oozed the stuff.

So Sam paid $199.95 for a bulk box of 300 blank white golf balls bearing no logos or manufacturer’s designs. After a few days experimenting in RayRay’s garage Sam took a bag full of balls to the northernmost remote part of the beach where nobody ventured. Placing a ball on the sand, he spread his legs the way he had seen Tiger Woods do on TV at the bar, addressed the ball with a length of driftwood driver that gave new meaning to the word “wood,” drew back on the club, swiveled his hips and swung with minimal force.

Because he aerodynamically designed the ball’s explosive force, the blast went down rather than up and out, maybe registering on a Richter scale but not causing any damage except to the sand. The same would happen to some of the most emerald velvety greens in the Sunshine State.

Sam would send and find a way to deliver exploding golf balls emblazoned with Gov. Ronnie DeShifty’s RD initials inscribed in gold (airplane model paint) wrapped in gold paper (gold spray paint) to big campaign donors, garnering attention from donors and golfers far and wide as well as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The press would stampede. America would assume terrorists had taken over Florida’s links. DeShifty campaign contributors would steer clear of country clubs and public courses. Money would dry up. The governor would lose not only the election but maybe even his wife.

Yes, no matter how bad the hurricane damage, the country clubbers and their golf addiction would soon return to Florida even as countless people continue to suffer the consequences of climate change that would only get worse through mass ignorance. Most Florida golfers would dismiss, trivialize or ignore the danger, especially the richest of the breed, a posh ilk of self-absorbed blue bloods preening and posing on the links. Sam had something special for them, a personal coral sunshine surprise he’d been working on for some time.

Wearing a black watch cap, camouflage pants, old fashioned black rubber galoshes with metal clips, a black and green flannel long sleeve shirt buttoned to the neck and wraparound sunglasses like an East Los Angeles gangbanger, Sam headed out to check on his friends. From what he could see, Clearwater Beach survived pretty much intact except for palm fronds and trees on the street. Nobody in Sam’s tight social circle likely got hurt.

Safe and sound in her condo after a rough night of wind and rain, Kim Phillips labored over her newest dilemma. Hurricane or no hurricane, never trust a Russian military veteran or draft dodger or mercenary or whatever Ivan Popov was before he moved to America and messed up life as Kim knew it. She didn’t know Ivan lied when he told her he sold insurance for Prudential. When she let him go home she felt exhausted, afraid of herself when she pulled her pistol and held him at gunpoint – afraid of the feeling she wasn’t alone even when Ivan left in a hurry, just happy to be alive.

In reality all Ivan ever sold amounted to a voluminous pack of goods to any sucker he could find willing to take the bait. Kim let her emotions get the best of her as she battled her hidden internal demons and tried to figure out ways to be a good friend and neighbor. Ivan did come up with an insurance policy on his brother, though, a 100 percent bogus document that listed Borys’ assets to the best of his knowledge with a two million dollar payout to Kim as sole beneficiary.

Ivan forged Borys’ name on the policy that gave consent. And he signed his own name as a witness. And he wrote an addendum to the policy swearing Borys loved Kim as a secret admirer ever since he saw her picture in a real estate brochure, wanting her to be financially sound and set for life in the event of his death because he viewed her as a soulmate.

Kim had read the page-long policy, expressing amazement at this shocking announcement.

“He doesn’t even know me,” she said. “But he’s in love with me?”

Ivan never thought Kim would buy into this fantasy but saw the opening in her insecure innocence and took advantage, trying to milk Kim’s simplicity in any way he could. Killing Borys would finalize this uncivilized ruse and Ivan would steal any of his brother’s possessions he could grab.

“He’s just shy,” Ivan said.

“I’m so confused,” Kim said. “I don’t want to be part of this. I’m out.”

“Once in never out,” Ivan said. “First rule of Russian mob.”

“I’m not in the Russian mob,” Kim said.

“You are now social member of South Florida family,” Ivan said. “Take a few days to think over proposition. Then call me.”

That’s the last she heard of him before the storm. Kim wondered how her personal mental cyclone had happened so quickly. Had she known about Tara and Shannon sowing disorder within her psyche she would have understood this unholy alliance was not her fault. Her personality disorder had already careened out of control and needed severe medical management.

Kim had no memory of driving to Ivan’s place at the Spyglass, didn’t remember going into his studio apartment and half remembered punching him. She had no recollection of stuffing him into the car trunk. Her meeting with Ivan clouded her mind like one of those magic mushroom hallucination flashbacks she read about, a bizarre light show she dreamed after passing out after a bad drunk. As she struggled to put the pieces together, a knock sounded on her door.

“I’ll get it,” said new roommate Marty Durkin, who jumped up from the couch where he had been watching CNN’s Don Lemon get rained on in Orlando.

“Glad to see you made it,” said Ruby when he opened the door. “I’ll take off my gull mask if we can stand at a safe distance on the balcony.”

“Another survivor,” said Durkin, stepping aside to let her in and keeping his distance.

“I just checked on RayRay and he’s fine, practicing his Rolling Stones songs at the bar,” Ruby said.

“I am so happy you’re safe and sound,” said Kim rushing into the room from the kitchen at the sound of her friend’s voice. “I’ll open a bottle of wine.”

“Awesome,” Ruby said.

While Kim chose a bottle of California Central Coast pinot noir, Ruby took a seat across from Durkin.

“We have a problem,” she said.

“Florida is one big problem,” Durkin said.

“I’m not just talking about Governor Ian,” Ruby said.

Before Durkin could process the comment, Kim raced back in the room waving a corkscrew the way a butcher wields a boning knife as Kim’s split personality took over. Wild-eyed and frazzled, she screeched.

“Out of my way!”

Kim’s split personality Tara howled in an accent that reminded Durkin of all the drunken Irishmen and Irishwomen he met at the shore growing up in Stone Harbor.

“No, you get out of my way,” said Shannon, Kim’s second multiple personality.

Durkin stood ready to fight but didn’t know with whom to put up his dukes. Kim’s face contorted as she struggled to emerge from cerebral darkness and regain her composure. Snapping out of grim delusion she did her best to speak.

“Would you both like if I sliced some apples and Swiss cheese with our wine?”

Tara’s voice bulled her way into Kim’s voicebox.

“All hands on deck! All hands on deck! We need whiskey now!”

Shannon took up the call for booze.

“Whiskey! Whiskey!”

Ruby stood her ground facing Kim who seemed ready to collapse. Speaking in a confident tone, the cords stood out in Ruby’s neck. Lines of muscle in her arms tightened. Knuckles whitened as she clenched her fists and extended unseen energy she drew from her spiritual core.

“Out,” she said. “Santa Muerte orders you out. Devil spirits leave. Florida demons depart. Out.”

Kim dropped to the blue shag carpet. Rushing to her side, Durkin looked to Ruby then to Kim and back to Ruby.

“She’s in the strong hands of mother death,” Ruby said.

Durkin looked ready to run when another knock on the door shook him from their turmoil. Moving toward and slowly opening the door, Ruby shook her head as she smiled at a man wanted by every cop in Florida who now stood before her hiding in plain sight.

Sam Bennett gasped, breathing hard through his gull mask.

“I ran out of gin during the super gale,” Sam said. “Who’d like to make me a martini?”

Out of respect for friends and others facing destruction in Florida, I’m putting on hold today’s chapter of Swan Dive!

My serialized novel is set in Clearwater Beach, one of many Gulf Coast communities currently at risk of suffering damage and loss in the mounting fury of Hurricane Ian.

So stay calm, stay smart and stay safe. The best way to look out for yourself and others is to follow rules, expert guidance and scientific history.

We’ll pick up as soon as we can on the story of Sam Bennett and his holy mission to save the gulls, respect the environment and fight the power of political corruption, human greed and meanness.

Flying made perfect sense to young Sammy.

From his first blurred glimpse of the mother gull taking to the sky, flight offered an aerial experience he needed to explore. Speeding aloft afforded the promise of the cosmos, an unending journey to everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a refuge where no beginning or end exists. Taking wing as a human without wings posed a dilemma Sammy resolved to solve.

Neither his manic mother Samantha nor his anxiety-ridden father Ricky ever understood the driving force that shaped their boy’s every instinct. Baby Sammy experienced their ignorance as soon as they returned from a failed mission to Vegas and picked him up from alcoholic foster parents who took custody from police when Sammy’s grandmother died and the two dud parents abandoned him.

“Mommy’s home,” Samantha said.

“Waaaawaaaawaaaa,” Sammy said, flapping his little arms in a vain attempt to take off.

Samantha wrinkled her nose.

“He smells,” she said.

“The kid looks flighty,” Ricky said.

“Waaawaaawaaa,” Sammy said.

Samantha held her nose and wanted out.

Vegas visions of prosperity soured for Samantha and Ricky in less than two weeks. She saved $230 from a stint she worked as an exotic dancer wearing feathers not in her hair but elsewhere. Nobody called to interview her in response to the blackjack dealer applications she filed at two fledgling casinos. In three days Ricky owed money to a wannabe Mafia loan shark who threatened to kill Samantha if Ricky didn’t cough up the dough but was impressed when Ricky said he’d be thrilled if the thug took her off his hands. The loan shark thought about killing Ricky instead. No movie deal unfolded for Samantha either, not even one of the first black and white blue movies the mob was shooting with off-duty cops as leading men in a bare trailer out in the desert.

Both losers figured they better go home to sleepy little Clearwater Beach and claim their abandoned property before the Florida cops charged them with any number of felonious crimes even minimal investigation would uncover.

Oblivious to the traumatic desertion ordeal their infant experienced, again they thought only about their own lives and braced to face reality’s gross uncertainty. Impulse made them light out to seek fame and misfortune in the first place. Rather than common sense, impulse controlled their behavior. They could not care less about a dear dead grandmother who departed with no insurance, estate or will. What they got was a squawking bundle of crap that looked and acted like a baby bird, a yearning bundle of nerves that grew into the last responsibility either malcontent parent ever wanted.

So they put Sammy on the market, deciding to sell him to the lowest bidder if the auction came to that.

This peroxide blond floozy with the eyebrow pencil beauty mark, cat eye rhinestone glasses and leopard print pedal pushers and her skinny as an on-the-floor stick shift Old Spice aftershave reeking lout of a husband figured a thousand dollars would seal the deal. Maybe they could peddle their needy baby mammal to one of the Cuban Santeria witches who showed up occasionally in town to use like a rooster in one of her religious ceremonies. After putting word out on the street as far as Tampa, after a month still nobody wanted him. At that point they’d have taken a rooster in exchange. At least they could eat the bird.

The day Sammy turned 10 he stood at the edge of the garage roof wearing a costume he spent two months making for Halloween – the only way Sammy figured he could fool his parents to allow him to sew and glue and piece together a feathery ensemble the kids got hysterical mocking when he wore the suit to the school parade.

“Hey, bird brain!”

“Look at the bird boy!”

“Birdshit Sammy!”

Undaunted, the child persevered even when the big kids imprisoned him in the boy’s lavatory and made him eat worms. Sammy freaked them all out by asking for more. Nobody invited him to a Halloween party, his mother got drunk and fell asleep without taking him trick or treating and Ricky told Sammy to go out by himself and try to be home by midnight.

Climbing to the garage roof and standing at the brink, Sammy made himself a promise. No bobbing for apples for this kid. Forget dressing as a hobo, Zorro or a beatnik. Sammy Bennett would fly. In his dreams he simply bent his legs, raised thick soft wings in a strong upward lift before lowering them, and flapped them with an up-and-down motion propelling him forward with his wingspan at a right angle, twisting automatically with each downward stroke to keep aligned with the direction of travel in his flight pattern that took him up, up and away.

Gravity took over as soon as stepped off the roof. On the way down a rush of air stole Sammy’s breath with the bold shock of a junkie ripping off an iron lung, leaving the boy broken and crumpled, facedown in the mud and gravel that littered the short driveway like sharp debris on a lava laden beach after a surprise volcanic eruption. Hitting the ground nose first, the nasal bone snapped, crushing both the upper lateral and lower lateral cartilage. All three bones in Sammy’s left arm also broke, snapping the upper arm bone (humerus) and both forearm bones (the ulna and the radius) into a compound fracture that protruded through Sammy’s bronzed butterscotch skin like brittle Thanksgiving turkey bones showing through a picked over carcass.

Fate forever changed Sammy’s flight plan for the future.

Samantha took up diet pills and crocheting little pink pigs in blankets the elderly women in the area nursing homes thought were darling. She charged a dollar for these prized piggies she laid out on a card table under a beach umbrella and sold outside her ramshackle house. Ricky hawked stolen color television sets and discount cigarettes he bought from a Largo gangster who hijacked trucks to Miami. Samantha hated Ricky as much as Ricky hated himself.

Maybe Sammy’s desire to fly helped push Samantha over the edge when she asked Ricky for help one rainy Sunday afternoon and said she couldn’t reach the outside of the window to wash off the gull shit. Ricky really should have known something was up with her washing windows on a rainy day, but he leaned out with a wet rag and didn’t see her coming from behind. One good nudge did the trick. Accidental death caused by a broken neck, the coroner’s autopsy report said.

Maybe Sammy’s aspiration in the air helped Samantha make up her mind about her own bad self-worth when she stood on the holey house roof with her big toes touching and her calloused bare heels together before launching herself into the air with all the aplomb of America’s mermaid Ester Williams going off the high board in the 1940s in a perfect swan dive.

Sam turned 18 and joined the Navy right after his mother’s funeral. Pilot training appealed to him but he worried about birds getting caught in the jet engines – more concerned about the birds than the pilots – and settled on radios, sonar and every Navy class and training opportunity he could take. Sam excelled and eventually signed up for survival training just in case – in case of what he couldn’t say.

For the next several decades, his desire to soar by his own power only evolved, becoming the most powerful obsession of his existence.

Now 71, sitting alone under a pier few people peered beneath, Sam watched the purple morning sky decorated with Venus and the crescent moon, a sight that thrilled him as did all celestial views. Living on the run in the land of the sun felt natural and good. Healthy and alive, Sam knew survival was what you made it. With dozens of his beautifully crafted gull drones safely shelved in RayRay’s garage, Sam felt secure. Police had no reason to suspect RayRay of giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the state and had no reason to ask a judge for a search warrant.

The cops also had no reason to suspect Ruby or Kim. Durkin could turn on him, though. Sam didn’t trust this relative stranger and maybe never would. You never knew how an ex-cop thought, especially one carrying bloody baggage from what Sam had heard at the bar. Besides, with the recent gun incident at RayRay’s, Durkin apparently had his own problems.

Patient and calm, Sam waited to make his next move – retrieving the explosive detonators he stole from the condo construction site and hid under an abandoned catamaran with the name Kon-Tiki painted on one of the hulls. About three years ago somebody left the watercraft to deteriorate in the high beach plants and perennial grasses on an isolated stretch of dune nobody frequented anymore.

Sam sometimes sat beside the raft and meditated, seeing himself as a reincarnated bird Buddha – not looking for trouble and landing wherever he pleased. Maybe one day he’d meet a mate. Love mattered, of course, and Sam epitomized emotion and devotion for all sentient creatures, understanding how primitive impulse and instinct would one day propel him beyond the sun where all past, present and future gull spirits find ultimate freedom to fly free forever. Sam repeated his mantra over and over, words to live by.

Fly.

Free.

Forever.

Sam now planned his next attack. Instead of using poop bombs like he did during the test run on the ribbon cutting, he’d plant one or two detonators in each drone’s belly. Kamikaze gulls loaded with real bombs should get their attention. Hitting the super condo tower at any stage of construction would convey a clear message no development was safe as long as work unbalanced the ecosystem. That meant no development was safe.

Florida’s pampered Ivy League governor and his prissy pink cotton candy wife continued to menace nature as well as authorize the building of countless commercial properties on the backs of the poor, the vulnerable and the powerless. Condos would continue to rise, the rich would profit more than ever and the gulls would suffer.

When Sammy was four a hurricane wind blew a gull through the front window of their rented house. Grabbing his camera, Ricky made Sammy pose in his bare feet, flannel pajama bottoms and a Davey Crockett coonskin cap, holding the poor bird by the legs in his left hand like a duck or pheasant after a successful hunting trip.  In his right hand Sammy held his dad’s deer rifle as big as he was. Struggling to control the weight of the gun, Sammy dropped the weapon and blew a hole in the ceiling. Ricky spanked him so hard he couldn’t sit on the commode without crying for a week.

Gulls and children deserve better.

Freedom fighters normally train to build fires to get warm, ward off predators and provide heat for cooking. They create potable water, tie knots, make weapons, build shelters, learn basic first aid, fish and trap and what have you.

Not Sam.

At this stage in his life, all that and more came to him as second nature. More so than looking after himself, survival to Sam meant improving the lives of others, including other species, making sure nature thrived and his friends not only lived but lived happily ever after.

Only then could Sam fly away.

Forever.

Bleary-eyed as a potato liquor-loaded gulag guard, Russian bruiser Ivan Popov opened his Spyglass Apartment door and stared through red glassy eyes at the woman who had come knocking.

“Nostovia,” the woman said in an Irish accent. “Let’s get drunk!”

One half of Kim Phillips’ breakaway split personality, Tara pushed her way into the room that smelled of hard boiled red beet egg gas and sour fried cabbage. As she passed Ivan she caught a whiff of body odor that smelled like a cross between goat cheese and Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov’s feet after a rough night teaching pirouettes at the Vaganova Ballet Academy.

“Ooh, yum, you smell like homemade turnip cologne,” Tara said.

Sensing passion in the air, Ivan smiled.

Now the other half of Kim’s great big psychic divide kicked in.

“You reek worse than a stuffed up Kremlin commode,” Shannon said.

Poor Kim and her dueling Irish personalities boomed babble like Boss car stereo speakers blaring from the open door of a Dublin docks automotive store as they bantered back and forth.

“Cool man cave, Ivan,” Tara said.

“Stinky Neanderthal pothole,” Shannon said.

Backing up and losing his balance, Ivan tripped over the heavy Cossack hat with earflaps he threw on the floor two weeks ago and never got to wear in Florida. His mother Raisa brought back the ushanka headgear from one of her many successful hunting trips to the Russian Arctic Islands before the KGB terminated her with a tainted toothpick for selling black market lingerie.

Tara clapped her hands when she spotted the soft clump of thick white fur.

“Oh, Ivan, poopskie,” she said. “You have a kitty.”

Even Shannon expressed appreciation for the unexpected softness in Ivan’s cold black heart.

“Awww, look, a fluffy Persian cat,” Shannon said.

“Hairball not cat,” Ivan said. “Ivan hate cat except in pot pie. Thick fluff is authentic Russian polar bear fur.”

Ivan’s hysterical laugh bounced off the walls like a straitjacketed patient in a St. Petersburg hospital for the criminally insane, his maniacal tones resounding as loud as a Politburo commissar’s caviar belch at a Defender of the Motherland holiday lunch.

Kim, Tara and Shannon loved animals – except for Ivan, who defined the word beast in anybody’s book.

Tara screeched.

“You eat cats?”

Shannon roared.

“Polar bear fur!”

Predators can go too far.

Tara’s left hook caught Ivan upside his head so hard he saw hammers and sickles dancing before his lizard-lidded eyes. Shannon’s right cross knocked him out on his feet, staggering him as he fell face forward into a half-eaten pierogi pile stacked in thick dill cream sauce on the small table that held a cheap imitation ivory bust of Joseph Stalin.

Talking the tough talk and walking the tough walk are as different as a team of East German shot putters and a set of Matryoshka stacking dolls. Ivan did not lead the pack in matters of brute strength bravado and injured easily as Kim and company laid waste to his soft bloated body curled into a fetal position on the floor.

Where Kim got the strength to drag Ivan Popov to the parking lot is anybody’s guess, but as soon as she bound and gagged her prisoner with duct tape and slammed the trunk of her car she forgot all about what and who she had just locked inside.

Doing her due diligence as they say in shallow American society, the next morning Kim greeted a couple of recently retired financial advisors from the Gold Coast who wanted to invest in two beachfront condos – one in which to live, the other to sell. Gleeful over the potential sale, Kim raced from one condo to the other and back to her car to grab brochures from the trunk when she got a bigger surprise than the U.S. hockey team did when they performed the miracle on ice and beat the Russians in 1980. She screamed as soon as she flipped up the trunk.

“Ahhhharrggggg!!!”

Ivan screamed, too, reversing his duct tape muffled howls back into his big mouth and down his throat.

“MMMMMMFFFFFF!!!!!”

Kim slammed the lid.

Two hours later she mustered the courage to drive to a $384,999 townhouse with an attached garage built in 2007 she was handling on Colony Reed Lane. Once inside the garage with the door closed behind her, she again opened the trunk. Pulling the Smith &Wesson Bodyguard 380 handgun from her bag and pointing the barrel at Ivan’s bulbous nose, she tore the tape from her prisoner’s mouth. Ivan did his best to remain calm and in control even though he could barely control his urine flow.

“Hello pretty lady,” he said.

Kim hissed with the pent-up mean contempt of a black diamond reticular python, a sound you’d recognize in any snake pit.

“Shut up you slithering slug,” she said. “What are you doing in there?”

Ivan tried to be brave.

“Looking for a date?”

Flustered yet agitated, Kim’s emotions ran amok.

“I’ll give you a date,” she said.

In a flash Kim’s face transformed into the menacing face of evil as her split personalities rushed into the fray like methamphetamine-crazed outlaw motorcycle gang enforcers getting their kicks at a group stomping.

“Shoot him,” Tara said.

“Empty the magazine, reload and shoot him again,” Shannon said.

Freaked out with frenzy, Kim struggled to maintain control as Ivan whimpered like a lost Borzoi (wolfhound) puppy in a cage.

 “No, no, please wait, let me live. I help you put end to bad for environment super condo tower,” Ivan said.

Tara and Shannon stopped issuing threats.

“What’s in it for us?”

Ivan smiled his best imitation Omar Sharif smile he practiced for weeks after seeing Dr. Zhivago on the Turner Classic Movies channel after hacking into the cable when he first got to Florida.

“You get to spend weekend with me in hot tub,” he said.

Kim pounced, punching Ivan and screaming in three distinct accents, lambasting this despicable degenerate gangster who thought he could buy his way out of any uncomfortable situation. Feeling more powerful and bolder than ever, Kim jeered and mocked, taunting her captive as she demanded compliance.

“One last chance, you commie scum,” she said. “What exactly will you do for me?”

“Borys must go,” Ivan said. “No super condo gets built on beach without super real estate mogul around to build tower.”

Flabbergasted with Ivan’s deadly deceit, Kim proceeded with caution.

“Go where?”

“Back to the USSR,” Ivan said, starting to giggle. “Haha. I almost make Beatles joke. Get it?”

“You’ll arrange to get Borys deported?”

“I arrange to get Borys reported – as in documented dead.”

“You’ll kill him?”

“I make Borys disappear,” Ivan said. “Still have poison toothpick KGB used to whack Mother with enough toxin germs left over on tip to kill bad man strongman brother.”

“The KGB gave you the murder weapon?”

“I give it to them first,” Ivan said. “Mother was no good capitalist spy.”

Kim’s thoughts whirled.

When Ivan grinned, sunshine filtering through the dirty window gleamed off his gold teeth.

“I also sweeten pot by making you beneficiary of Borys’ new life insurance policy,” he said. “I sell insurance part time for Prudential.”

Tara and Shannon could no longer contain their zeal for anarchy.

They wanted in.

“But first a full pardon from your little dictator governor for our friend Sam Bennett,” Tara said.

“Yeah,” Shannon said. “I think crazy birdman as you call him is really cute.”

Stopping in mid-slurp, Randall Lark dropped his oyster on the half-shell loaded with horseradish and hot sauce. Wiping his mouth and hands on a white cloth napkin – RayRay insisted on white cloth napkins for the bar no matter how dirty they got or how much it cost to have them cleaned – he prepared for a showdown. Narrowing his eyes like an assassin looking through shutter slits in a dank motel he honed in on his quarry.

There he was.

The killer cop.

Marty Durkin offered a big goofy grin and wave to the Happy Hour regulars who now recognized him as one of their own as he waltzed into the Elbow Room beach bar like king of the sand dunes. For a moment, wearing an orange polo shirt decorated with gulls gliding in midair he bought at Target, Durkin didn’t have a worry in the world.

“Nice shirt,” Kim said.

“I’m feeling tropical,” Durkin said.

Heavy under Randall’s arm the semi-automatic pistol hung grip down and ready for action. Feeling his pulse in his throat, Randall’s thoughts raced through his frazzled mind, confusing and motivating him as he stood at the crossroads of his life with his conscience losing to the voice of vengeance.

Do it now. Just stand, walk slowly to the bar as you draw, tap Durkin on the shoulder, look him in the eye, say “This is for Tyrone,” and pull the trigger. Then split. Buy a plane ticket to Jamaica. Smoke weed and drink rum all day. Enjoy life as a free Black man.

Randall stood. Randall started walking. Randall quickly closed the distance and started to pull the firearm when Durkin turned.

“I spotted you soon as I walked in,” he said.

“I have a gun,” Randall said.

“So do I,” Durkin said.

“Me, too,” said RayRay from behind the bar.

“And me,” said Kim sitting beside Durkin as she slid her hand inside her black leather fringed shoulder bag that lie on the bar.

Nobody moved.

Nobody got hurt.

Dillon squawked from his spot at the end of the bar where he sipped a margarita on the rocks through a straw. Although the bar mascot parrot with a birdy beer belly sometimes came up with original words and phrases he learned from TV comedies he watched, his best responses came in reaction to a trigger word. This customer exchange overloaded him with one super trigger word.

“Gun?” Dillon screeched. “Gun?”

Conversation stopped as fast as an inebriated NASCAR driver at the Daytona Speedway.

“Shootout at RayRay’s,” Dillon said. “Shootout at RayRay’s.”

Nobody who knew what was going on laughed when everybody else at the bar did.

Durkin calmly spoke to Randall.

“Now what?”

Turning, Randall Lark hurried past vacationers gobbling grouper burgers and locals banging down two-for-one tequila sunrises. Picking up speed and stepping fast once he hit the street, he disappeared into the salty night.

“You knew he was coming,” Kim said.

“Only a matter of time,” RayRay said.

“At least I know he’s here,” Durkin said.

Just the week before Durkin told Kim and RayRay the whole story about accidentally shooting Randall’s brother, leaving out nothing and explaining everything. Now he expressed concern that he would put everybody at the bar in danger if he continued to frequent the Elbow Room.

“I value our friendship too much to do that,” Durkin said.

 “I can handle it,” RayRay said, immediately thinking about the Popov brothers showing up unannounced to try to take him by surprise and get the tapes.

“Tell me about it,” Kim said.

With that Tara and Shannon slowly came to in Kim’s mind, cranky and hungover after a long drunken nap, double-trouble split-personality devil twins ready to party at all costs.

Durkin teared up, overcome by truly understanding how much he meant to his new friends.  RayRay made him promise to continue to stop by for Happy Hour. Kim found the courage to invite Durkin to rent the extra bedroom in her condominium at a reasonable monthly rate.

“That sounds great,” Durkin said. “I’ll move my stuff in tomorrow.”

All three had quickly grown close. Fate sometimes brings danger but destiny also can heal. Real friends stick together no matter what happens when the shit storm hits. Ask wanted man Sam Bennett, who brought on a deluge all by himself and seemed no worse for the wear, actually proud of himself for going to the trouble of standing up for his rights and for theirs.

Ruby appeared from the kitchen holding a dinner check.

“I got this,” she said as she paid Randall Lark’s tab – a dozen uneaten raw oysters and a pint of untouched Barracuda Teeth Ale. “He seems like a really nice guy.”

Just then a voice exploded with the surprise intensity of an avalanche at a Siberian ski resort. Russian villain Ivan Popov stood swaying drunk at the doorway slurring a verse from the “Internationale,” the old anthem of the now defunct Soviet Union.

“So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.”

Also standing drunk and grinning, Borys Popov swayed like a MIG pilot who just successfully defected to Las Vegas with the dying swan lead dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet. He sang a different verse of the song from the long ago Communist workers’ movement.

“And if those cannibals keep trying

To sacrifice us to their pride

They soon shall hear the bullets flying

We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.”

No one mistook their Marx/Lenin disharmony for a Lennon/McCarthy song.

“I buy vodka for whole bar,” Borys said to RayRay. “Then you give me dirty tapes. We live happily ever after. Now I buy house a drink!”

“Dirty tapes,” Dillon screeched. “Dirty tapes!”

Many of the Elbow Room patrons, some who were so confused by the disruption they stood and placed their hands over their hearts as the men sang, accepted Borys’ offer of a free shot. RayRay lacked a stock of good Russian vodka but had a couple of cases of Grey Goose a shady truck driver who recently stopped for a beer said fell off the back of a truck and sold to RayRay at half price.

Ruby barely heard the throaty whisper emanating from Kim’s mouth in a thick Irish brogue.

“Make mine a double,” Tara said.

Ruby also heard the second different Irish accent join in the ensuing confusion.

“Oh, shit, he’s cute,” said Shannon.

“I want the fat one,” Tara said.

“I’ll fight you for him,” Shannon said.

“I have a gun,” Tara said.

“I have two,” Shannon said.

Dillon heard the Irish accents and immediately launched into his own slurred version of the traditional St. Patrick’s Day jukebox favorite, “The Unicorn.”

Just like nobody ever sees a unicorn, nobody in the bar saw what was coming next,

Just like nobody ever hears the shot that kills them.

Ivan Popov’s eyes bugged out.

“Fake? What mean fake?”

Russian Mafia billionaire Borys Popov gave his dimwitted brother Ivan the kind of look he usually reserved for roadkill skunk and sewer rats.

“Just what I said, Мудак, sacred Ukrainian cross one big bogus counterfeit hoax.”

The politically connected mob chieftain had asked Ivan to stop by to help him look for the famous Ukrainian crucifix he thought he misplaced while relocating into the luxurious house he moved into when he lost the penthouse in the structure he imploded to replace with the super condo tower he was building on the beach. Borys’ palatial digs rivaled Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Trump once even asked Borys for a few decorating tips to share with Melania who didn’t know a curtain rod from a petrified whale penis.

Borys’ bachelor pad encapsulated an $11 million Clearwater Beach palace he owned and used only to entertain business, political and mob clients (sometimes one in the same), an 8,548-square-foot waterfront home built with 5 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. The mansion also featured a private gym, a theater room, a billiard room, a media center, a deepwater dock with a 30,000 lb. boat lift, and an elevator he used to reach a private observation deck where he enjoyed vodka gimlet cocktails in the lounge after a long day on the water burying bodies.

Ivan moved into Sam Bennett’s musty old Spyglass room the old fellow vacated when he went on the run for the gull drone poop attack against the right-wing Florida governor and his flighty First Lady. Few people knew Sam’s whereabouts, but those who did also knew he’d survive. More than anything, Sam’s friends wanted him to be free. Sam craved freedom more than anybody.

The missing 24 karat cross included a one-inch piece of wood encased in glass, the blessed artifact cut from what gullible Christians worldwide called the “True Cross” on which they believed Jesus hung like drapes in the Vatican. This famed fragment from the cross on which Roman soldiers supposedly crucified Christ was even bigger than the other priceless hunk that was submerged in April when Ukrainian soldiers sunk the Russian warship Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Jesus personally autographed this splinter as he hung out to die, modern believers believed, scribbling his initials before soldiers pounded that last nail into his right hand. Suckers also believed deeply that Jesus carved the letters in the Latin alphabet because Jesus spoke all the world’s languages.

But Borys tired of the ruse about the cross that had outlived its usefulness. Now only interested in making the biggest profit he could, he decided to sell the relic. The plan went off the rails when Ivan “borrowed” the cross to wear to RayRay’s Elbow Room like a Saturday Night Fever medallion and told the Duvall brothers about the priceless value of the cross. These seasoned hustlers saw a quick score when he passed out drunk and they slipped the cross over Ivan’s thick skull.

“Cross is 100 % phony with spray paint gold,” said Borys. “I make deal with Pope to sell cross for $25 million in off-the-books cash stashed in Swiss bank account.”

Ivan looked shocked.

“Pope believes cross is real?”

Borys sneered.

“Pope believes virgin birth story, doesn’t he?”

What could have been a huge score for Borys Popov now turned into a massive debacle. Nobody expected the Duvalls to drive off the bridge in a deadly crash-and-burn automobile accident. Nobody expected RayRay to come into possession of the sneaky brothers’ treasure map, let alone the religious heirloom. And nobody expected the cellphone to ring in Ivan’s pocket while his international gangster and well respected Floridian brother scorned him.

“I found your necklace,” RayRay said when Ivan answered.

“You have blessed piece of holy lumber?”

Trembling, Ivan handed the phone to Borys.

“Return sacred relic now, American swine,” Borys said.

“Only if you guarantee nobody files charges against Sam Bennett,” RayRay said.

“Cross worth nothing to me now. Tell it to the Pope” Borys said. “You will pay for threatening John Gotti of USSR, you American capitalist dog.”

“I have something else you might want,” RayRay said.

Borys went silent as a bronze bust of Karl Marx as RayRay explained in a nice well-modulated voice.

“Remember those six-foot suntanned Moldovan beauty pageant contestants in Moscow a few years back? When I found the cross I also found video tapes of you and you know who dancing naked to Ted Nugent songs in what looks like a golden champagne fountain spray.”

Borys dropped his voice to a growl.

“You have those tapes? With me and you know who dancing naked in golden shower with Moldovan hotties?”

RayRay couldn’t help but snicker.

“You know who is wearing nothing but a red baseball cap backwards like it’s Snoop Dog Day at the massage parlor. And you’re covered in thick chocolate syrup with ripe red strawberries stuck to your nipples.”

Borys threw the cellphone across the room, smashing glass and knocking off the wall a framed photo of him playing golf with you know who. The picture landed face up with you know who’s belly glistening in the sun streaking through the window like an orca sunning himself at another cruel SeaWorld show.

Borys glared.

“How did Elbow Room boss get dirty tapes, Ivan?”

Ivan blushed redder than heat rash on a Red Diaper baby’s bottom.

Here’s why: Those equally dirty Duvall brothers stole the cross and the porn tapes Borys stored on a thumb drive that wound up in Ivan’s pocket so he could show off you know who’s X-rated ballet to the girl he expected to pick up in the bar that night, Ruby, the sexy waitress who would fall for him one way or the other whether she liked it or not.

All Ivan could think to say in response were two words from his favorite Ted Nugent song.

“Wango Tango,” he said.

Killing Durkin would end Randall Lark’s blood reprisal. Bringing the man who killed his baby brother to justice, as cops like to say, would be sweet. Just pull the trigger.

Randall already owned a gun. He bought the piece on sale for $300 within a week of tracking Durkin and moving to Florida, a Taurus PT-111, the number one concealed carry gun in Florida, according to the bad breathing bearded redneck clerk at the Florida Gun Supply store who wore faded red and blue tattoos on both arms featuring coiled rattle snakes ready to strike with fangs dripping venom.

“This one here’s a beauty,” the hick said. “Equipped with textured grips. You never want to drop a gun in a firefight. Sweaty palms and adrenaline can make you lose control of your carry gun in a pinch.”

Having never before owned, carried, shot or even touched a handgun, Randall stared. The white gun nut clerk kept rolling.

“Adjustable sights to make sure you’re always as accurate as possible, double/single action trigger that could save your life, striker-fired trigger that makes the single or double action trigger pull excellent.”

Stunned, Randall listened.

“Picatinny rail system which allows you to mount a laser or flashlight to be able to get on target or see a threat in low-light conditions, double stack capacity which ensures you’ll never run out of ammunition in a firefight.”

With his mind in a daze Randall’s thoughts drifted back to the gunfire blasts in his old Philadelphia neighborhood.

The gun merchant seemed offended.

“You listening to me? You hear me, boy?”

Randall woke to the sound of the word.

“Boy?”

The clerk grinned.

“No offense, mister,” he said.

That made two times Randall wanted to shoot somebody. Durkin, of course, topped the hit list. As time passed maybe Randall would conjure more targets. Maybe he’d run amok as a Black militant on a race rampage to get even like everybody else in America who seeks a reckoning to punish perceived sinners through slaughter with a bullet.

Randall now carried his own death grudge – a mortal vendetta heavier to him than the cross Jesus dragged up Calvary – and his own weapon, a semi-automatic with a dozen 9mm cartridges in the magazine with one in the chamber. The time had come to unload, actually to load, empty the magazine and maybe even reload. The time had come for Randall to start shooting.

Nestled nice and snug under his left arm, tucked into a snappy black leather shoulder holster, the nine hung within easy reach if he decided to use the gun when he got to RayRay’s to get something to eat. Entering and taking his seat at the same table for two at the back of the room where he sat a few nights before, he picked up a menu and got ready to order. He noticed Durkin sitting at the end of the bar.

Out back, behind the restaurant, Sam Bennett hid in the shadows eating the hot dinner RayRay snuck him as part of Sam’s being on the run. Sam hunched over a large pot loaded with three dozen steamed clams. The old man splashed melted butter down his red Hawaiian shirt as he slurped the night away. Sam sure loved clams – steamed clams, chopped clams, raw clams, clam chowder, clams casino, clams Rockefeller – any kind of clam cooked or uncooked any kind of way.

Nobody knew Sam had developed his love for gulls because of clams.

Each time Sam Bennett savored clams he registered deep in his body and soul his earliest nutritional experience, not remembering but feeling a primitive bond that connected him to another animal. In Sam’s case that attachment remained real, very real, a literal primordial taste and smell of primal nourishment reminding him of the raw clam meat soaked in river water that once kept him alive,

On a Saturday morning so very long ago, little Sammy’s first birthday, in fact, he fell asleep for a nap beside his maternal grandma Betty who had earlier spoon-fed him mashed yellow cake with chocolate icing to celebrate in their second floor apartment above the fresh fish shop. Weak from early onset arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries around the heart) and hypertension (high blood pressure), just caring for the baby wore her out.

Six months earlier she cradled her grandson in arms thin as smooth mop handles and watched her peroxide blond daughter with the eyebrow pencil beauty mark, cat eye rhinestone glasses and leopard print pedal pushers drive off with Sammy’s father Ricky to seek their fortune out West –  Vegas she thought her daughter Samantha said where she could dance with feathers in her hair or deal blackjack hands in one of the new gambling casinos until a producer or agent discovered her and featured her up on the silver screen. That was the last anybody heard of Samantha or Ricky. Whether they made it to Vegas was anybody’s guess.

When Betty and Sammy stretched out in the cool breeze of that crisp golden afternoon grandma left the bedroom window wide open, taking her last breath of salt air and Lemon Pledge furniture polish into her lungs until the shivering organs shut down as her heart tightened and gave out. Sammy awoke hungry, his cries weak and helpless, intermingling with yawps of gulls that gathered around the downstairs fish shop to dine on entrails and offal.

Baby shrieks drew the female gull to the window ledge where she landed and stood watching Sammy watch her make an instinctive decision, one that signaled life and death that hung in the balance. Lifting off and flying away she returned about 15 minutes later with the first of many deep fried clam strips she pilfered either from the garbage at the shop or from one of the handful of restaurants that operated near the beach in those days.

Soaked with water, the juicy clam ribbons the motherly gull dropped into Sammy’s open mouth sometimes five times a day gave Sammy the life sustaining nourishment he needed to stay alive. At night the gull returned, sopping wet from bathing or wading, to open wide her wings and nestle Sammy beside her drenched body as he found water droplets with little lips and snuggled for warmth into her soft pulsing breast.

Two days later police broke into the apartment after concerned workers downstairs called 911 to complain about a fishy but not fishy odor that wafted downstairs. Sammy screeched his greeting at the first responders, refusing to stop squawking until he got to the hospital.

“I thought the kid was a gull screaming,” a cop said.

Police located no gull – just a weak but living baby boy, a soiled child wrapped in a mysterious white blanket of swaddling feathers, a little ragged human hoping to fly.

Facing herself in the sparkling condo hallway mirror, posing in a cocky sideways stance with her arms folded across her chest, Kim spit scripted words like she was rehearsing for a remake of the famous Robert De Niro Taxi Driver movie.

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Talkin’ to me?”

Screaming her lines with an Irish brogue, feeling faint and weak, Kim braced herself against the door jamb between the condo’s plush living room and bright all blue kitchen. Continuing to talk to herself, this time sounding more like herself, she said, “Jesus, I sound like that stupid parrot Dillon at RayRay’s.”

Now the bastard brogue returned, blurting from her mouth, babbling coarser, cruder blather than before.

“Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the fook do you think you’re talkin’ to?”

On the other side of the closed door Ruby heard the frenzied jabber before she knocked.

“I’m standing here,” the shrill voice said. “You make the move. You make the move. It’s your move.”

Ruby knocked again, harder, louder.

“Kim! You in there?”

Slowly opening the door just a crack to peek out, Kim looked flushed and pale, wearing an expression as cold as a red, white and frozen raspberry vanilla parfait.

“Sorry I was watching TV,” she said.

Alert and leery, Ruby stepped inside the condo. The shining glass screen on the huge flat TV mounted on the wall loomed black, silent and off. Trying to smile with her eyes highlighted above her N95 mask to help remind Kim why she was there, Ruby got ready for anything.

“You ready to go clean out Sam’s room at the Spyglass? RayRay’s gonna store the stuff Sam asked him to keep until our poor fugitive can come out of hiding.”

Stooping to pick up an empty Paddy’s whiskey bottle, Kim stumbled. Moving with the fluid grace of a mermaid negotiating a rocky shoreline, Ruby caught Kim under the arms as Kim steadied herself and stood, wobbly and leaning on Ruby for support. Ruby looked Kim straight in the eye.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Kim’s face contorted, twisting like a hangman’s rope in a hot desert wind. When she spoke, her voice took on the inflection and accent of a gruesome Gaelic banshee snatching souls in a bloody horror movie.

“You talkin’ to me? You fookin’ talkin’ to me?”

Backing off, Ruby centered herself and called on Santa Muerte for balance and wisdom. When she spoke again she did so with confidence, drawing on ancient acumen in her quest for salvation.

“Who are you?”

“Not that it’s any of your fookin’ business, but you can call me Shannon.”

A second higher pitched tone with a thick Dublin brogue now joined in, wailing from Kim’s drooling whiskey-breathing mouth.

“And I’m Tara,” the voice howled. “You must be Little Miss Muffet.”

Ruby fired back.

“Which of you two sick goblins told Sam to jump off the ledge?”

“We both did,” the voices roared in devilish harmony.

The two-faced colleens’ blood-curdling shrieks assaulted Ruby’s brain as her mind filled with visions of a hit as final as a mob contract killing, an end these two dastardly djinns would one day provoke in Kim as long as they controlled her mind and pushed her toward the ragged edge of her frail emotional ledge.

Ruby watched movies, too, and all she could think of was poor Father Karras, the priest in The Exorcist who only possessed the power of Christ to try to compel the devil to relinquish his stranglehold on the child in the famous film. Even off-screen, tormented actor Jason Miller suffered the same bane that propelled him into the bottomless purgatory of drug and alcohol abuse that eventually killed him. Ruby had a more compelling ally in Santa Muerte who gave her a potent edge to overcome evil.

Ruby wasn’t about to send her friend Kim crashing through any condo window or high-priced psychiatric rehab program. She would help her overcome this hellish obstruction, overpowering her tortured mental pestilence through strong-willed goodness as instructed by Santa Muerte. Ruby had experience. As a girl she had seen a similar curse when on a trip to visit her grandmother in Mazatlán, Mexico, Ruby’s mother helped a young brewery worker drive screaming poltergeists from her mind and back into the fiery shadows of the netherworld from which they emerged.

Although Ruby also benefitted from spiritual instruction from her grandmother on her father’s side, a wizened woman who burned black candles in a Havana garden shed among statues of African-Cuban fire god Changó, Santa Barbara and other Santeria protectors, Ruby grew partial to Santa Muerte, the ultimate protector. Even Ruby’s grandma agreed, paying homage, as did her father, to Mexico’s La Santísima Muerte who reigned supreme.

Plucking a Beach Sunflower from two florets she wore with stems tucked into a black leather headband she decorated with a silver peace sign, Ruby brushed against Kim’s chin the soft petals of the radiant plant that grows among the dunes.

“Sunshine,” she said.

Kim scowled.

“Sunshine grows us too, Kim,” she said.

Kim froze.

“People dismiss the awesome power of the sun,” Ruby said. “Light always escorts darkness. You can’t grow a mango without the sun.”

“I love mango daiquiris,” Kim said, coming back to her senses.

Working fast, Santa Muerte’s power embraced her newest daughter and took hold. Darkness would surely revisit unless Ruby could marginalize these two treacherous Irish waifs who would return to trash and pillage Kim’s mind.

Ruby took Kim’s face into her hands.

“You are the Muerte,” she said. “You already have her in you.”

Puzzlement and concern crossed Kim’s face.

“Is Sam OK?”

Ruby tucked the sunflower snugly behind Kim’s ear, securing the sacred blossom with a deft crossover braid.

“Free as a bird,” she said. “Free as a bird.”