Damaged Goods

By John Leslie

Ex-football player and ex-cop Harry Molina is paid to keep people safe, and in sunny Southern Florida, where Uzis are as common as retirees, a lot of people need his help.
Harry's friend Bryce Marshall, a high-strung financier with a slew of bad debts, has been forced into a disappearing act that may never end. Bryce's beautiful wife needs protection too -- her Sicilian good looks have attracted some dangerous strangers. And Jane Unruh's eighteen-year-old life is at risk. Witness to a murder, she's crossed paths with a fierce and unforgiving killer. She's also stepping forward with some stunning news...she is Harry's daughter.
In a land of randomness and sun, mangroves and sizzling highways, the heat is on. Key West after sunset will be deadly dark, and unless Harry takes fast action, no one will make it through the night alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AbsolutelyAmazingEbooks.com
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311964182

John Leslie

John Leslie is a loving and devoted father of six dynamic kids. A man who served 25 exuberant years in the United States air force, defending freedom, peace, liberty and justice around the globe. He’s the mastermind behind this book as well as the previously released “The Bathroom Comedian” (2005), and the in-progress work of “Blessings.” Additionally, he’s a former student and great admirer of author Laura Hayden, the wife of a fellow air force veteran. His wife, who is now in living out one of her life-long dream of running her own book store in Alabama.

Book preview

DAMAGED GOODS

John Leslie

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING eBOOKS

Published by Whiz Bang LLC, 926 Truman Avenue, Key West, Florida 33040, USA.

Damaged Goods copyright © 1993, 2014 by John Leslie. Electronic compilation/ paperback edition copyright © 2014 by Whiz Bang LLC. If Love Was a Train, written by Michelle Shocked, copyright © 1988 by Songs of PolyGram International, Inc. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized ebook editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents.

For information contact:

[e-mail]

Other books by John Leslie

Novel

Border Crossing (2013)

The Gideon Lowry Key West Mysteries

Killing Me Softly

Night and Day

Love for Sale

Blue Moon

Florida Mysteries

Blood on the Keys

Bounty Hunter Blues

Damaged Goods

Havana Hustle

Killer in Paradise

DAMAGED GOODS

To Live and Die on the Keys

HARRY MOLINA: Once he was a lineman for the Miami Dolphins. Then he was a cop. Now he is a man whose wife died with too many things unsaid, and whose daughter has suddenly come into his life.

BRYCE MARSHALL: He had the pretty-boy looks of Joe Montana and he knew how to scramble. With an investment scheme exploding in his face and drug money involved, he went on the run – and crossed paths with a crazy teenaged killer.

JANE UNRUH: Her mother had liked booze and men too much. Her father had disappeared. Now she lived one day at a time, playing her guitar on the streets of Key West until a world of violence – and her father – found her.

MARIA MARSHALL: The daughter of a Sicilian immigrant-turned-millionaire, she shared her yogurt with her pet bird and went through money like water. But inside spacey, beautiful Maria was a will of steel – and the fury of a woman scorned.

– 1 –

KEY WEST, SEPTEMBER

"Hi. My name is Jane. I’m the adult child of an alcoholic mother who is dead, and I never knew my father."

A chorus of voices responded: Hello, Jane. Then the person to Jane’s left introduced himself.

Jane Unruh listened to the other introductions, each of them so similar. She’d been coming to these meetings twice a week for a month since arriving in Key West. Jane had shared with the group the most intimate details of her life – her mother’s alcoholism and abuse, the abandonment of several stepfathers, and her two-year-long search for her biological father. She felt so close to the members of the group. They knew so much about her, and she about them, but yet she thought it odd she knew everyone in the room only by a first name.

Jane wore her street clothes, the ones she’d worn to Mallory Square where she played guitar and sang some older, bluesy numbers along with newer stuff by people like Michelle Shocked. Jane was one of the many performers who gathered nightly on the dock to entertain the throng of tourists who came to watch the sun go down, her guitar case open in front of her to receive tips.

This evening her guitar case was closed, resting beside her metal fold-up chair in the church hall at this meeting of Adult Children of Alcoholic Parents. Next to the guitar case was another bag containing the blue and burgundy uniform she would change into when she went to her job at the downtown Burger King.

Today, Jane was despondent. Everything seemed so hopeless. After two years on the road, life seemed to lack direction. Even if she found her father, she thought, maybe he would run from her, maybe he didn’t want to be found. The thought depressed her. It was a common thought, one that had often plagued her, but today it was particularly depressing. It scared her. Perhaps because one of her biggest fears was that she would wind up like her mother.

For that reason, or maybe just because she was feeling so weirded-out, she decided to share with the group something she had never shared about her mother’s life.

My mother was called Poochie, Jane said. It was a funny, old-fashioned nickname. When she was a kid at school, the nickname had always drawn laughs, but no one in this group even smiled.

She was married four times, five if you count my father. He and Poochie lived together before he left. A year later she married David, the man who gave me his name.

David didn’t hang around longer than any of the others, not long enough for Jane even to get to know him. They were living in Kansas City, in Mission Hills, where Poochie was a jazz fanatic and socialite. She promoted Kansas City musicians with an inheritance from her father who owned a company that manufactured ice chests.

Jane paused. There were childhood events she had already shared with the group. She didn’t want to ramble on about the same old stuff. She was trying to rid herself of the distress she felt today.

Seven months after my eighteenth birthday, she continued, Poochie died of a drug overdose at our house in Mission Hills. Most of the family money was gone. Poochie had spent it on drink, drugs, and men. I was in college at the time, and then, finally, I was on my own.

No one said anything for a moment. Every other person in the church hall where they rented space on Tuesday evenings had difficult stories to tell, and Jane regarded each person as a trusted friend, although she never saw any of them outside this room.

She had been coming to meetings like these, in one town or another, for a year and a half – ever since she had been on the road. She always found a group and for one hour a couple times a week she knew she would renew her commitment to find her father. Jane didn’t even know his name. The little she did know she had learned from distant relatives now dead. She knew for example that her father had played professional football. Now, after today, she knew more than ever that she would find him, that she had to find him because what she had learned in relating this story was that only by finding him, by sharing her love with him, could she hope to save herself. And through this understanding she would renew her commitment each time she told her story.

She walked from the Church of the Holy Innocents, carrying her guitar and singing a Leonard Cohen song softly to herself, feeling better, relieved, though still with a lingering sadness. Her period was coming, which might account for some of the sadness. She reminded herself to stop and get some Tampax.

The Burger King on Front Street was next to the World Famous Conch Tour Train depot, and although she wasn’t scheduled to work tonight Jane agreed to take the last half of another girl’s shift from eight to midnight. She had made thirty bucks at sunset but was trying to save money to get out of here in the spring, so she wanted to work as much as she could.

Jane changed clothes in the restroom, putting on the Burger King uniform of dark blue slacks with a burgundy knit shirt. She put her street clothes in the canvas bag that she stored, along with her guitar, in the small employees’ room. Then she went out and took her place at the cash register with its keyboard, a push-button menu.

Whopper. Whopper with cheese. Fries and soft drinks printed on the keys. She pushed the buttons, took the customer’s money, made change and gave out the computerized tickets. Dull, mindless work without challenge and without risk. When someone asked for a Whopper he knew what he was getting and Jane knew she wasn’t going to get complaints. The burgers came out in their yellow boxes with the same measure of toppings and condiments as they had yesterday and the day before that and the year before that. She didn’t get tips, but she didn’t get hassled either. And on Fridays she picked up her computerized check.

Between nine and ten things slowed down. The downstairs was empty. Upstairs a couple of people sat out on the deck overlooking Front Street. The kitchen crew was minimally staffed. There was a fry cook, Gary Weyman, and LeAnn, a black high school girl who bagged the fries, boxed the burgers, put everything on a tray and passed it to the customer.

At ten-thirty, Jane said, LeAnn, I’m going to take a break.

Yeah, I hear you. I’d like to take a break for a couple of years from this place. LeAnn giggled.

Jane left, went out the back and across the parking lot to a store that was open late where she could buy the Tampax. When she returned and was about to go into the restroom, she heard a staccato-like blast that sounded like a jackhammer, like someone was tearing up the floor of the kitchen. She felt the vibration go through her body.

Jane stepped across the hall and opened the door that led to the grills where the Whoppers were flame-broiled, not sure what she was going to see. Maybe there had been an explosion in the gas lines – except the noise she’d heard didn’t sound like an explosion.

What Jane saw was Gary lying on the tile floor. Strewn around him were buns, bags, cups and a cardboard king’s crown with the Burger King logo. Raw hamburger, some chicken pieces, French fries and the plastic packets of condiments, torn open and oozing mustard, ketchup and relish were scattered everywhere as though a hurricane-force wind had rampaged through the restaurant. The stainless steel grill and refrigeration units were stabbed with flecks of meat and blood and food.

Blood puddled around Gary’s body, his burgundy shirt stained even darker. Jane wanted to back away, but felt herself drawn forward, her fists clenched, terrified but wanting to help, to do something – to know what had happened.

She looked for LeAnn and found her on the floor below the cash register, the front of her face missing.

Jane wrapped her arms around herself, then started backing away, knowing there was nothing she could do, that she had to get out, to call someone and get help. She kept backing, wanting to scream but holding it back because she sensed that whoever had done this – and she knew now it was no hurricane wind or gas explosion – was still in the building.

Jane looked up and saw him, just as he was turning, shoving the thing that had sounded like a jackhammer up inside his vinyl jacket before he paused at the door and took one look back, like a customer wondering if he’d forgotten something. He was young, a boy really, with shoulder-length, mouse-colored hair and skin like chalk. And eyes that stared only for a second at hers; eyes as flat and expressionless as nail heads. And unlike the hundreds of other customers who passed through here each day, Jane knew she would never forget his face. Just as she knew she would never forget LeAnn’s.

Then Jane ran out the back and across the parking lot to the Pier House where she finally screamed.

– 2 –

MIAMI. MARCH.

It was going on one o’clock in the morning when Harry Molina walked past the police cruiser, its flashing red and blue lights spinning monotonously over the corner of Ocean Drive in Miami Beach near the Cardozo Hotel. A few people milled around waiting for something to happen, but by the time Harry got there the majority that had been there twenty minutes earlier were back at their sidewalk tables, drinking, animated, but paying little or no attention to the scene in front of them.

The stretch limo was double-parked on Ocean Drive, and Carl, the driver, leaned against the front fender, talking to a cop when Harry walked up. Carl, who had been with the company only six months, had called half an hour ago, waking Harry to tell him there’d been a problem with a client, a shooting, and he might want to come over.

Harry lived in Miami Beach, ten minutes by car from the Cardozo. He had told his employees, any problems, accidents, they were to call him immediately, no matter the time.

Harry said, Carl, what’s the trouble?

Carl was thirty, thirty-one. He’d spent a couple years in the army, then gone back to school without knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Drifted around the country for a year or so before coming to Miami and looking for a job.

Harry had hired Carl, because of his knowledge of electronics, to help with the installation of a home security system that was the major part of Harry’s business. But Carl had requested to drive one of the two limos that Harry leased to clients who wanted a chauffeur-driven vehicle and bodyguard. Carl had a calm disposition that was undoubtedly a by-product of his size, and had proved an excellent employee.

Carl stood away from the car and said, Harry, it was the damndest thing. The guy, who wouldn’t weigh a hundred and thirty pounds dripping wet, was running around town all day, going from one place to another, sometimes a hotel, sometimes a rooming house or apartment. I’d wait for him on the street, he’d be gone fifteen minutes, a couple of times for an hour or longer, but he’d always tell me to wait, like he was coming right out. After the second or third stop I could tell he was beginning to get juiced.

The cop looked up from the report he was writing, glanced at Harry. You own the car?

Yes, Harry said. It’s my business.

The cop didn’t say anything, went back to writing while Carl ran through the scene: The guy was dealing, getting high while doing his rounds. Each time he came back to the car he was a little more wound up. Sometimes he’d bring a girl with him, ride around in the limo for a while snorting, stop off, get a drink someplace, then come back to the car and ride some more. Once, Carl couldn’t be sure, he might even have balled one of the chicks in the backseat.

Harry listened. He was bigger than Carl, six-one, weighing close to two-twenty. He had thick dark hair that was beginning to be spackled with gray as he approached fifty. A bushy mustache lived like a rug on his upper lip. Hair that made a soft mat grew on the backs of his hands.

The cop slapped his notebook closed and put it in his pocket. He turned to Harry. We’ll do what we can. I wouldn’t hold my breath though. These punks – He shook his head and walked over to the patrol car. It was over.

Harry understood the frustration; he’d been a cop himself. He walked around the car, pausing to look at the round, splintered hole where a bullet had struck the back window. Carl was beside him.

He wanted to cruise the Cardozo, Carl explained. We stopped in the street. The guy was looking for someone inside the hotel, must’ve seen him sitting in there in the bar because he told me to wait.

I said I couldn’t sit here, I’d drive around the block. But he told me he’d be right back out. He was wired. I watched him go in, talk to some character at the bar.

Harry knew what was coming, the hotshots, guys acting out movie scenes, like that one with Al Pacino – Scarface.

Harry opened the rear car door, listening to Carl, but looking for something, anything.

The guy was back in less than two minutes. I had the light on, reading, when he opened the door and said, ‘Let’s blow.’ He talked like that, a heavy accent. The motor was still running. I put it in gear and started to pull out when I heard the window shatter. I thought, Jesus Christ, somebody threw a rock. The next thing I know the guy in the back is jumping out of the car, a gun in his hand, chasing the other guy who’s got a gun, the one who’d been in the bar. I swear to God it’s like in a fuckin’ movie. They run down the side street, but it happens so fast nobody’s had time to panic. When they do it’s all over. Somebody in the Cardozo called the cops and I called you.

There was some white powder on the car seat and the floor carpet. Harry moistened his finger and picking up some of the powder from the seat, tasted it. Cocaine. His tongue went numb and the taste was bitter, unpleasant. He couldn’t believe that at one time he’d actually enjoyed this stuff.

He didn’t find anything else in the car. He backed out, closing the door. Carl started to say something, Harry cut him off. What was the guy’s name?

Tony Mendoza, Carl said.

Harry had Carl park the car and they walked around the area, down the street where Carl said he’d seen Mendoza chase the guy from the Cardozo. Away from Ocean Drive the streets were quiet at this hour. He knew from experience that there was little they could expect from the cops. Nobody had been hurt, there was minor damage to the car, the cop would file his report and that would be the end of it. If they were lucky, Mendoza would get picked up down the line and a cross-check would tie him into the incident on Ocean Drive.

To Harry, it was a pain in the ass. Because of his insurance deductible he would probably be out $500. At least Mendoza had paid in advance for the lease. Some leftover instinct from his days as a cop compelled him to check out the area. With Carl beside him, he turned and walked down the alley that ran behind the hotels, parallel with Ocean Drive, where the garbage was picked up.

A guy was asleep on a thin pile of cardboard shoved up against the side of a building. There was a sour smell back here, the accumulated rot and waste festering in the metal Dumpsters.

Harry walked halfway down the alley and was about to turn back, thinking of walking back to his car and driving home, when he saw something a few feet away, a puddle. An oil smudge maybe. He walked forward and bent over, dipping his finger into it and carrying it to his nose. It wasn’t oil.

They followed the liquid trail that Harry knew was blood to a Dumpster ten feet away.

Carl lifted the hinged double-lid on the Dumpster. The aroma that escaped was foul. Black plastic sacks were piled to the top as well as loose rotting garbage. Harry held his breath and shifted a couple of the sacks around.

A running shoe was stuck between two sacks and Harry reached to push it out of the way before realizing it was attached to a foot.

They hauled the body out of the Dumpster until it was sitting on the lip of the lid like a dummy, the head lolled forward, chin to chest, most of the face missing.

Mendoza?

Carl shook his head no. Harry carefully let the body slide back into the Dumpster, and they went to call the police.

Harry slept fitfully, dreaming of Helen, his wife, dead less than three months. When he woke and looked at his watch it was six o’clock. He’d had less than four hours sleep. He began putting the day together in his mind. Get the limo taken care of, get through the insurance claims, then he was supposed to go to the track with Bryce Marshall. As he got up, Harry thought he’d better stop at the cemetery and say good-bye to Helen once again.

– 3 –

"Maria, you seen my goddamn checkbook?" Bryce Marshall came downstairs buttoning a sheer black silk shirt that was tucked into softly wrinkled linen trousers with double pleats. Supple leather loafers adorned his sockless feet.

Look in the desk in the hall, a woman’s voice said.

The tone in Maria’s voice irritated him. Like he was some goddamn kid who didn’t keep his room straight and could never find anything. The truth was, it was Maria who was the forgetful one, but trust her to know where the fucking checkbook was.

Bryce turned into the hallway that led to the front door and opened the drawer to the antique desk – Maria’s nineteenth-century heirloom. The desk, like Maria’s family, was Italian. Her immigrant relatives from Sicily.

Bryce found the checkbook and walked into the kitchen. A year and a half ago he’d spent twenty grand having it remodeled. The stainless steel gleamed, the tile was from Mexico and the long wooden butcher block from Italy was as smooth as Bryce’s loafers and approximately the same color, copper pots hung from a steel rack suspended from the ceiling around the hood of the all-steel, eight-burner, double-oven gas range.

A Boston fern hung in the bay window above the double sink and several braided cords of garlic dangled from a peg near a wire basket filled with onions mixed among green, yellow and red peppers. There were other baskets filled with colorful fruit: mangoes, papaya, oranges and bananas. On the table in the breakfast nook was a bowl of fat strawberries.

Find it? Maria asked. She poured coffee into two Wedgwood cups while a lovebird whose feathers matched the color of the fruit in the basket sat on her shoulder nibbling at the lobe of Maria’s right ear. Maria reached up, plucked the bird off her shoulder and, holding it gently in her hand, touched her lips to its small curved beak.

Where you said, Bryce answered. He was distracted, distant. Maria could be so fucking irritating at times, he thought. And sanctimonious. She took all this for granted. A half-million-dollar house in Coral Gables. Twenty grand spent remodeling one room. One room for Christ sake! She was spoiled, spoiled by a rich father, and it never seemed to occur to her that someone had to go out and earn money to live like this.

Maria was smiling. Even the smile irritated him. She looked like fucking Mona Lisa. She said, Be good, Matilda! while putting the bird back on her shoulder. Coffee? she asked Bryce.

Just a sip. I’ve got to run. Bryce picked up the cup from the counter.

What’s the rush?

The rush. Like he never went to work in the morning. Ten years ago he’d gone through bankruptcy. Had to start over and spend five years working for Merrill Lynch. Now he was back on his own and the bottom was falling out of the South Florida boom anytime. And she wants to know what the rush is.

I’m taking a check over to the Biltmore. They need a deposit. I’ll be in the office until this afternoon. Later, Harry Molina and I are going to the track. I’ll be late. Bryce took two sips of the coffee before putting the cup down.

He watched Matilda disappear down the front of Maria’s dressing gown, and seconds later pop its feathered head up between her breasts.

You and that bird, Bryce said.

Matilda loves me. It’s more than I can say about others who inhabit this house.

I love you, Bryce said without feeling. He had moved over to the bowl of fruit on the table, picking idly among the strawberries.

You’re never home.

Look, Bryce said. Don’t start on me. I work, okay. Where do you think the money comes from so that you can hang out with your girlfriends doing aerobics and eating lunch in fancy restaurants all week?

I suppose quite a bit of it came from my father.

Bryce sighed. Look, we’ve been through this, he said. I’ve probably doubled what you got from your father when he died.

And it’s not like I’m drinking gin and eating steak for lunch. She turned her back to him. Getting that petulant tone of voice. I’m a vegetarian, she added. Though I suppose there’s no reason for you to remember that.

Jesus. Sometimes he wondered how he’d lived with this woman for fifteen years. Talking to her was like talking to a child; she had a one-track mind.

I’m going now, he said. He plucked a handful of the