The Boynton Beach Cartel: Marisol Short Stories

By Lawrence Rose

They're leaving their cabanas and turning smugglers, traffilers, traficantes! .  Blue haired and bald smugglers!  The folks from Boynton Beach!  Meanwhile, in a different story, Crazy Heinrich is driving away from his lab in the wreck of Auschwitz Drei, on a mission to destroy the world.  Who is sent to stop him?  Marisol de Froissart , wine heiress,of the CIA and her lame consort Steven, the music teacher from Berkeley.

Packed with humor, some of it racy, romance, tragedy, the occult, this collection of short stories has received smiles and tears from its readers.  Previously published literary review stories are included.  'Cutthroat Gap", a story of bent realities from the Old West, leads the list.

You will enjoy this fun read from the author of the FIVE STAR NOVEL, "Paris Once More". 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lawrence Rose
• Release date: Jun 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201560508

Lawrence Rose

Lawrence Rose's papers say advanced degrees in Geochemistry and advanced degrees in Music Performance.  He weaves these together in most of his works. From New York to Oklahoma to San Francisco, he has lived an adventurous life in research and in concerts! Later, he is settled into Paris and Toulouse, and now in Medellin, Colombia! 

Book preview

The Boynton Beach Cartel

Selected Short Stories by Lawrence Rose

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark. The information in this book is distributed on an as is basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. 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, events, or locales is entirely coincidental."

© Copyright Lawrence Rose, 2020.

© Lawrence Rose, 2019, Cutthroat Gap... published in Adelaide Literary Review.

© Lawrence Rose, 2019, Quest for the True Fondue...published in Scarlet Leaf Review.

Dedicated to my travel partners, the Singer Eaters of the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, and the People of Colombia creating a miracle.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Boynton Beach Cartel...............................  3

Banana..........................................................9

A Haunted Existence...................................... 11

True Baby Boomers Adventures with Kathy........ 13

Broceliande, the Enchanted Forest..................... 22

Brief Okie Tales............................................. 31

Cutthroat Gap............................................... 33

Mansion Against the Storm, a Ghost Story? ......... 44

Never Sleep with the Attendance Secretary.......... 51

Flight to Toulouse, A gift of Song.......................61

Quest for the True Fondue at Evian-les-Bains....... 65

Retreat?  Hell, We Just Got Here! ......................74

Jeffie and the Croc ......................................... 78

Searching for Dan Brown ................................ 84

The Basics of Rubber – Bunawerke ....................95

Extroit, Forgiveness ..................................... 116.

T

HE BOYNTON BEACH CARTEL  dedicated to us Baby Boomers!

Come, Josephine, in my Flying Machine and we’ll...

Capt. Irving Kap Kaplowitz, USNRet., looked off to his right at the lights of Miami in the distance. His German-built 1930 Ford Tri-Motor Albatross complete with original tail numbers and Swastikas added later, the gem of his highly successful touristy Kosher Airforce Museum, was heading straight for the strobes on top of the 75 foot tall Florida Gas and Electric tower. The veteran of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kap gunned the engines and pulled up almost to a stall as he jumped sluggishly just over the powerline. Flying over the Sea of Grass in the Everglades anytime was not easy. At night it could be suicidal.

Jesús y María!!! Concentrate, Viejo! You missed that one by a chucha’s whisker, Kap! Ay Caramba, Dude!

‘Wimpy’ Rodriguez, his renowned and shady Colombian co-pilot, crossed himself and, smiling, wiped his forehead. He had made this flight hundreds of times, flying low, flying at night, flying by dead reckoning from the Bahamas. The cargoes he used to carry in the good old days, coke and weed, were illegal, but far less lucrative than the illegal contraband they were carrying on this their second flight for the crime organization Kap called ‘The Boynton Beach Cartel’.

...

...Two months earlier...

Step lively Mrs. Dolowitz, Mrs. Edelberg. Mrs. Rabinoff. Watch your step, my loves. They giggled. Wimpy helped the elderly women up the modified stair onto the wing of the Albatross and then into the port side aluminum door. The plane, Swastikas, and all, was going to take a few of the residents of Gan Dafna Estates, Boynton Beach, Florida, on their dream excursion to Bimini Island. It was Kap’s delight to use his Nazi plane to carry Jewish Baby Boomers in triumph to a beach vacation in the Bahamas, a triumph over their age, and over Hitler, and over the cost of their prescription drugs. The women were on a mission to bring as much medication from Bimini back to Gan Dafna as US Customs would allow. It was not much.

And did you hear? Ciel in Number 27 nearly died last night, said Mrs. Dolowitz. Her son never sent the check. The new daughter-in-law! OY! Ciel made do, but her pills ran out. They gave her some in Emergency. It was a near thing! Ach Gottenu!

The cost of everything!, said Kap. It’s a Shonda!

Everyone repeated, It’s a Shonda. Rodriguez, who by this time spoke a reasonable street Yiddish, joined in looking skyward in despair. Yes, a shame!

...

Ah, Bimini. The ten guests from Boynton Beach were put up at Morty and Sylvia Kahn’s Kahn-Tiki Resort complete with Kosher food and a Rabbi flown in from Borough Park, Brooklyn. An unctuous team of Bahamian doctors bribed to write multiple prescriptions for the guests at reasonable prices greeted them in the lobby.

Kap saw this medical Shonda going on, years and years of self-congratulatory we’re number one bullshit by the US government, the AMA, and the insurance companies, and resolved to do something serious about it.

...MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA, one month after that ...

Wimpy, amigo! Look! It’s easy. My plane can carry two tons of cargo. Take out the seats. We load up at Olaya-Hererra airport, no one cares. Pay them off. It’s not real Drogas... just insulin pens. At $12 each, we can load 10,000 of them, sell them in the US at $300 each... That’s a hundred off US retail! Profit, minus expenses, $288 each, times 10,000... about two million dollars a load. You can have 10%, 20% to pay off the cops here and the airport and the Bahamas. 10% for me... I’ll throw in the gas for the plane... About a million-five left. We give that either in cash, or insulin pens to the folks at Boynton Beach. They can handle the distribution. Their sons have already signed up to carry the stuff back to New York, Philly, Chicago. Exchange it for other drugs they need at very willing pharmacies and wholesalers. We just have to get the insulin pens here in Medellin. Ideas?

...Getting the Swag ...

The call went out in every barrio of beautiful, sexy, green, deep-fried, Medellin. Gringo Loco giving away 150 million pesos worth of genuine notes in exchange for two Sanofi Humalog pens in original packaging. Get more? Get more pesos. One hundred and fifty thousand Colombian pesos rounded out to about forty dollars. The kids kept $20 for every two pens they brought in. The Cartel would make about $550 for the two when resold in Florida. The farmacias didn’t object as the insulin pens went flying out of their stores. In Colombia, of course, no prescription is necessary... so, everyone was happy. A policía Capitán caught Wimpy collecting the insulin pens in the back of his Willys Jeep and was sent away COP$100,000 richer. No problemas? A cop or two visited occasionally. And since it wasn’t a real droga, the pay-off was minimal.

So now the flight was assembled at Olaya-Herrerra airport, customs agents paid off, flight controller paid off, tourists just hanging around were paid off, the coffee vendor was paid off, and off they rose into the chill nighttime Colombian mountain sky.

...The Landing in the Glades...

Each old Jewish Baby Boomer had all he and she could do slogging the few feet from the air boats and swamp buggies to the dry Hamocca Island, to the abandoned landing strip they had found on the old Esso Touring map. Most of the folks chosen for this landing strip detail from the retirement village were pretty spry, but some tried to use their walkers, all had a cane at least, and each one had a tiki-torch which they would light at Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum of Brooklyn’s signal to outline the runway for Kaplowitz and Wimpy... and for the insulin, worth its weight in gold! More... a literal life saver. The money wasn’t bad either! Social Security was another Shonda.

The Albatross approaching straight in from the southeast flashed its landing lights. Rabbi Teitelbaum searched his mind for an appropriate blessing but could only come up with the one for blessing the bread. OK, he thought, insulin, bread...related.

Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the Universe, who bringeth forth the insulin from the Earth! Oy-main.