The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of Friendless and the Six-Toed Cat, Part 8 of 8

An old trick from Mickey’s past might be just what the Crooks need as they head out into the open sea to seek safety in Miami and draw the desperate Silver Legion away from the innocent folks of Key West.

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, All the Time is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is the finale of The Case of Friendless and the Six-Toed Cat. If you haven’t read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, or Part 7 yet, check them out first.

Content Warnings: Mild Swearing, Violence, Gun Violence, Animal Violence, Death, Alcohol Use, Tobacco Use, Nazis

FRIDAY NIGHT, JULY 7, 1916
INCHWORM TRENCH, TRÔNES WOOD
MONTAUBAN RIDGE, THE SOMME, FRANCE

The kid crouched over the rat hole, staring, doing his best to stay silent. The shovel trembled in his hands.

“Do we have to kill 'em?” he whispered.

His best wasn't very good.

“Yes,” Mickey snapped.

“Are you just smash 'em, one at a time?”

“You got a better idea?” Mick asked.

The kid must've thought that was anything but rhetorical.

“It doesn't seem very efficient,” he offered.

“Kid - !” Mick started.

“Don't call me that,” the kid snapped back. Mick was the only man on the line who'd spare him a second glance, but apparently that wasn't enough. Mick was expected to talk the way Harold Queen wanted him to talk. He grunted and slumped back against the trench wall. They weren't going to be smashing too many rats with this much gabbing anyway.

“If you know a better way, I'm all ears,” Mick said with a sigh.

That kept the kid quiet for a while. Mick watched the rat hole intently. It was about as wide around as his fist. That meant the damn rats had to be as big as his forearm. Inchworm trench was just as he'd left it.

Mick leaned back and watched the stars. With light restriction in effect, he could see every one of them. Growing up in the city, he'd sometimes forgotten how much was going on up there. Sometimes he forgot he even could look up.

“We could smoke them out,” Queen offered.

“What?”

“Blow some smoke down their hole, that would get them running.”

“If the krauts see any smoke coming up, we'll have shells in our laps in about thirty seconds,” Mick said.

“Burn them out?”

“Same issue.”

“Poison, then?”

“Anything we put in there leeches out into here,” Mick said, indicating the standing water in the middle of the trench. Most of the time, they stayed on the boards above all the mud and mess, but every so often someone slipped or missed a step. Being in mud up to the knee was bad enough knowing it was already mixed with chemicals and excrement, rat, human, and otherwise. Adding arsenic to the mix would make that experience all the worse.

“Besides, we already used all the poison,” Mick added.

“How about a cat?” Queen asked after some consideration.

“You see any cats around here?”

“No, and that's part of the problem,” Queen replied. “We had cats on our farm, and never once did I see a rat.”

“You a farm kid?” Mick asked. Nothing about Queen said 'country' to him.

“It's not so much a farm,” Queen said, squirming. “Our summer home has stables on it.”

“'Our summer...'” Mick repeated incredulously. “Jesus God. Stables?”

“My father rode, he was a hunter,” Queen explained.

“Hunter's got a summer home?” Mick asked.

“No, that wasn't his job,” Queen stammered. “He liked it. He was a fox hunter.”

Mick grunted. Poor folks’ jobs had a habit of becoming rich folks’ hobbies.

“So y'all had dogs, too?”

“Well, yes, the kennels were on the property as well,” Queen said. He was starting to look like a cornered rat himself. He'd given up too much about himself for nothing in return.

“So you lot trotted around and watched your dogs tear foxes apart?”

“Well, no, I wasn't allowed on the hunts,” Queen said. “I am more of a target shooter. Hunting never sat right with me.”

“Well, you weren't allowed,” Mick prodded.

“I didn't want to go anyway,” Queen snapped.

“Quiet down,” someone hissed from a covered nook a few yards away.

“Sorry,” Queen peeped, mortified. He slouched into his uniform like he'd somehow shrunk three inches.

“Hush!”

“You want dead rats or sleep?” Mick snarled.

“Both!”

“Cram it,” Mick grumbled. He settled down and looked at the kid for a moment. Queen had gone quiet.

“Don't mind them,” he said.

“No, it's just...”

“Just what?”

“I, um, can do a pretty convincing 'meow.'”

“You what?” Mick asked. The kid blushed and gulped.

“I can 'meow' good enough to fool another cat,” Queen said. “I think I could fool rats.”

“Rats is smart, now,” Mick told him.

“If it doesn't work, we can do back to waiting and smashing,” Queen offered.

“So you scare all these rats, then what? I bash 'em when they bolt?”

“I have a better idea.”

“I'm listening, I could use a bashin' break.”

They spent the better part of an hour plugging up rat holes and collecting spare boards. By the time they were done, the whole platoon was awake and watching. They'd even roused Sergeant Hayes, who'd once slept through an entire mortar barrage. Everyone knew their plan by then, and the whole trench was buzzing.

“Last piece,” Mick said. He maneuvered a long board between the gathered, whispering tommies, then jammed one end into the mud right blow the largest rat hole. He leaned it over until the other end laid over the top lip of the trench, leading out into no man's land. Mick made sure the walls of planks he'd built were flush on either side of this ramp, then gave Queen a thumb's up.

Queen went red as a beet. He looked at the hardened soldiers standing all around him and gulped so loud that Mick heard it twenty yards away.

“Just do it!” Mick whisper-shouted. Queen took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then rolled up a newspaper that the lieutenant had donated into a makeshift bullhorn and stuck into the only other rat hole they hadn't blocked.

Then he meowed. He yowled with all his might, loud and wild as two tomcats shredding each other in an alley. The gathered tommies' jaws dropped in unison. Queen sounded exactly like a damn cat, and he kept going. Meows like Mick had never heard before emanated from this kid. He was possessed or something.

Mick readied his shovel. He wasn't going to be bashing, just herding. He waited for the first rat to come barreling out. He kept waiting.

After a few minutes of this, the tommies started grumbling.

“No one made you get up,” Mick muttered.

Queen was sweating and somehow redder than before. The platoon began dispersing to go complain in their own little sleeping holes. Hayes shook his head and checked his watch. It was well after midnight.

Mick was about to call it himself when he heard the first little scratch at the bottom of the ramp.

“Keep it up!” he hissed at Queen. The kid looked uncertain. Mick urged him on: “It's working!”

The tommies stopped where they were, their interest piqued. The kid meowed like he'd been born a cat. Mick watched the rat hole closer than he'd ever watched anything in his life. A little brown nose poked out, wiggling little brown whiskers. Two beady eyes peered up at Mick, reflecting the unadulterated night sky back at him. Queen let out a particularly inspired yowl, and the cork popped.

That first rat bolted up the ramp, followed by about ten thousand more. It was a river of greasy brown fur and terrified shrieks. The tommies ran over, clamping their hands over their mouths to stop from whooping with glee. The whole chute was filled with scrambling vermin, all pouring up and out of the trench. Mick couldn't hope to count them, it was a river of hungry, terrified disease, squeaking and squirming. There might've been a million for all he knew, and they just kept coming. He could've carpeted the London Bridge with them.

“Help!” Mick hissed. He was swatting at the lip of the trench to keep any rats from turning around and diving back in. The tommies joined in with their own shovels.

The rat torrent died down after a few minutes into a manageably bashable trickle, and the tommies took over, not caring that it was their Americans' day for bashing duty. Queen's idea had run off more vermin than every other rat patrol combined. They deserved a break.

Mick ambled over to find the exhausted kid flopped out in the dirt. Every tommy that walked by patted him on the shoulder and offered whispered gratitude and congratulations. They were all buzzing with excitement. Not one of them had slept through a night on Inchworm without getting woken by little feet on their face or little nibbles on their fingers before. They were excited. Still, Hayes and the lieutenant managed to keep them quiet.

Queen looked up at Mick and patted the spot next to him. Mick happily plopped right down.

“Good plan,” Mick said.

“Thanks.”

“So where do they all go?” the kid wondered.

“I don't care,” Mick said. He was about two seconds from passing right out.

Mick didn't time to ponder. A distant shriek perked everyone up. It had come from across the way, from the German lines.

“Was that...” Queen started.

“Yes, it was,” Mick said. The shriek was suddenly joined by a hundred others. The Germans were yelling bloody murder over there.

Mick and Queen hauled themselves up and risked a peek over the top. A rifle fired and he ducked back down, dragging the kid with him. It was followed by a dozen more. Mick didn't hear any rounds passing close, so he peeked again. Queen's head popped up right beside his.

The German trench was lit by muzzle flashes from the inside. They weren't firing at the British lines, but into their own. Orange light flickered up as a fire suddenly blazed to life.

“What's happening?” Queen asked.

“Might be a raid...” Mick guessed.

“No, wait. Do you see that?” Queen stood up taller and pointed at the sandbags stacked in front of the enemy trench, now backlit by a roaring fire.

“See what?” Mick asked. The whole platoon had joined them on the lip to watch the commotion.

Mick squinted. It looked like the sand bags were moving. He realized with a start that it was a blanket of about a million rats, swarming up and over and straight into the German trench, all at once.

“Well shit.”

SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 28, 1942
ABOARD THE PILAR
25°11'22.1"N 80°14'57.0"W

“Winston, Martha, to the stern!” Hemingway ordered and took off to the back of the boat, dodging men, women, dogs, monkeys, cats, weapons, cargo, and whatever Baby was to get aft. Mick followed. His wife was already there, and Winston arrived second later, his arms still full of hunting rifles.

“What's all this then?” he asked. Hemingway took the largest elephant gun out of Winston's hands and braced it on the stern rail. He aimed down the sights at the closest torpedo and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked like a bronco, plunking its high-caliber slug into the sea, far wide of the incoming explosive.

“Give me that,” Martha said. She took the gun out of Hemingway's hands, reloaded it, and lined up her own shot. She must have dinged the torpedo right in its nose, sending it up like the Fourth of July. The crew shouted with relief, but there were still at least fifteen more torpedoes incoming.

“Shooting gallery!” Hemingway called out. O'Laughlin and Kid Tunero joined Winston and Martha. The Irishman plugged away with his own heavy rifle, while everyone made room for the Kid and his bazooka. The crew shouted and slugged rum every time a bullet or rocket found a torpedo. Still, it wasn't enough.

“We got to drop some spikes,” Gator was saying. “You got the fuzz on your tail, you drop spikes. We need spikes.”

“We have spikes,” Don Monstruo said. He pulled a miniature crowbar out of one of his many pockets and pried a crate open, revealing a clutch of straw-packed hand grenades.

“Those'll work,” Gator said. “They'll need to float.”

Monstruo produced a life ring from under a bench seat and a roll of hurricane tape from his vest. The pair went to work carving up foam and taping it around the grenades. Saxon rigged up the ignition switches to bypass the pins. A sharp impact was all it would take to set them off.

“Steady hands, mon frère,” Gator said.

“Sí, sí,” Monstruo was saying. He grinned devilishly, then yelled: “Oye, Paxchi!”

The jai alai player appeared. After a second of conferring from Monstruo, he assumed the same grin. He took his cestus off his back and strapped it to his wrist. The straw glove looked like a big scoop. He nestled one of their grenades into its channel and took a big step back, then whipped his whole arm overhead and hurled the explosive a hundred yards with ease. In plopped down into the water right in the torpedoes' path. He scooped another and launched it right after. He was a living mortar.

Still, Mick didn't want to rely on gimmicks and safari skills to make it out the other side of this thing.

Mickey had to find out how far off the Office fleet was. He had to know if they could even make it. The U-boats would overrun them soon enough, whether they were floating or sunk. He turned around and pushed his way through the whooping, rum-shooting Crooks, back to the cabin. A small weight hit him in the back nearly teetered him off balance. It was Massimo, climbing over his shoulder to chitter in his ear and avoid getting thrown overboard.

“Go away,” Mick growled. He tried to swat the half-drunk monkey off his shoulder, but Massimo took and handful of Mick's collar and held on for dear life. He was squawking like a damn parrot and pointing into the water.

“What is it?” Mick demanded. He followed the monkey's finger and saw that a phalanx of dolphins had surrounded the Pilar, scores of them, as far as he could see. An old idea struck him like a ton of bricks. “Well ain't that something? Cypress! Charlie Cypress!”

Charlie Cypress pulled himself away from the line of shooters. His face was creased with worry lines.

“They're not shooting fast enough,” he said.

“No, they're not,” Mick replied. “But the krauts aren't the only ones with fish in the water.”

Cypress' eyes went wide. He looked from the purring cat to the dolphins to Mick to Massimo to Qutat again.

“You think dolphins can do anything to torpedoes?” he asked.

“It was Massimo's idea,” Mick said, pointing at the monkey on his shoulder. He could've sworn Massimo shrugged. “In about thirty seconds we'll be swimming, Chuck.”

“This ain't right,” Cypress grumbled, but he ripped open his backpack and pulled his alligator-charming hydrophone out. Qutat gave him a strange look as he jammed a microphone in her face, but she kept rumbling nonetheless. “Here goes nothing.”

He plunked the hydrophone's business end in the sea, and the response was immediate. Instead of idly following some strange call, the dolphins burst into action. The entire leaping pod veered away from the Pilar and dove, deeper than Mick could see. Massimo climbed from Mick's shoulder to the top of his head, squatting atop his spray-brined fedora. Neither of them could spot a single dolphin off either side of the boat.

“It drove them off,” Cypress said. He began reeling the hydrophone back aboard, but Mick stopped him.

“Leave it,” he said. “It ain't going to hurt any worse than what's next.”

“Hot damn, they're close!” someone whooped from the stern.

“Keep up the fire!” Hemingway roared. The torpedoes were a hundred yards off and closing. One warhead impacted a floating hand grenade with a crack and a roar. Tons of seawater rose into the sky and fell.

The remaining torpedoes slithered relentless beneath the surface. They were within two hundred yards and closing.

“Hold fire!” Martha ordered, and the crew followed her lead.

“Hold fire?” Hemingway shouted. “Perforate them!”

“No, use your eyes, Ernest!” Martha snapped at him.

Silver and gray shapes were emerging from the deep blue alongside the torpedoes' wakes.

The entire assemblage of Crooks, agents, officials, and mercenaries each uttered their own personal variation on 'What the hell?' in one of six different languages.

The shapes solidified into streamlined bodies, with black eyes and curved fins. The dolphins leaped into the air alongside the speeding weapons, probing them with their snouts. A gang of six surrounded the closest torpedo, nudging it from either side.

“What is happening? Hemingway wondered. Death had been certain and accepted seconds earlier, tt was a strange to be so suddenly uncertain.

“It's her,” Mick shouted, pointing at Qutat. She was still sitting pretty, purring away into Cypress' microphone. Several grown men crossed themselves at the sight.

“Get out of the garden!” O'Laughlin whooped from the stern. “Look at them go!”

The dolphins surrounding the closest torpedo all moved to its left side to nudge it off course. Their powerful tails churned the water, pushing and pushing until it turned aside. The rest were doing the same. Every torpedo the Nazis had set upon them was curving away from the Pilar. Mickey sighed while everyone else cheered.

“Gun it, Siskie!” Hemingway ordered.

“Ez al duzu uste dagoeneko hori egiten ari naizela?” the helmsman shouted back.

“We still have them to worry about, Michael,” Marge said. She had extricated herself from the nest of crates the crew had built for her. She clutched Baby tight to her chest with one hand and had a hell of a grip on Basil's scruff with the other. The big dog didn't seem to mind. Mick followed Marge's gaze.

Out there, past the curving torpedoes' paths, the U-boats were still coming. Men were swarming their decks, preparing the same cannons and mortars that had demolished the Legion armada. Mick could see soaked survivors with his binoculars. They'd been hauled aboard the submarines, and were no doubt explaining that they'll all gotten got but it wasn't their fault. Nazis hate getting got.

“Prepare for incoming fire!” Tamm shouted. The U-boats were in cannon range now. Their deck guns were designed to punch through steel. They'd shatter the Pilar's wooden hull like sugar glass.

A blast shook the air, and Mickey held his breath, ready to be underwater at any second. When he realized the sky was still above him and the deck was still pressing up against the soles of his shoes, he opened his eyes. Out there, across the blue, a U-boat was burning.

Another exploded seconds later, its hull buckling as a blast tore into it below its waterline. Mick snapped his binoculars to his face. A third U-boat went up, scattering kreigsmarine and Legionnaires through the air like kettle corn. He caught a glimpse of a trail of bubbles in the water, then a dozen more. Gray shapes surrounded each torpedo, shoving the warheads onto an intercept course with the U-boats.

“Those are jerry's own torpedoes!” Winston cheered from the bow. “Those bloody fish did it!”

“Dolphins are mammals!” Cypress tried to tell him, but his voice was drowned out by the celebrating Crooks.

The Pilar's crew was jumping, dancing, shooting into the air, passing around a brand-new bottle of rum.

Another pair of U-boats took direct hits while they watched, causing another round of whooping. The remaining submarines turned away, desperate to avoid similar fates. More torpedoes struck, though only rendering glancing hits. The few U-boats that could still escape under their own power did so, scooping as many of their floundering colleagues as they could and leaving the rest behind to sink or burn.

“Paxchi, Saxon, Kid, ready for boarding, full steam ahead!” Hemingway shouted.

“What?” Mick asked, dumbfounded. They'd survived by accident but Hemingway wanted to drive them right back in.

“They're damaged, sinking. This is our opportunity to take a few of the bastards alive and secure some intel,” Hemingway replied. “Besides, nobody deserves to drown out here.”

“Well, I can't argue with that,” Mick said. Siskie was bringing the Pilar back around to the east when the closest U-boat, damaged and expelling a tower of black smoke, exploded from bow to stern, ripping it in half like a hoagie roll. The wreckage sank in seconds.

“Was that another torpedo?” Marge wondered.

“No,” Saxon answered. “That was an internal blast. They're scuttling.”

“They're not risking capture,” Mick realized. Explosions ripped apart damaged U-boat after damaged U-boat from the inside-out, shredding their steel skins like wax. Eventually, only smoke, oil slicks, and dead bodies showed where they had once been. The functional remnants of the wolf pack were long gone, slinking away to the ocean floor, tails tucked deep between their legs.

The dolphins reappeared a few minutes later, jumping high as they played around the Pilar. Many a Crook raised his drink to the creatures in thanks. Mick was grateful for them, but every time one got too close to the boat, Massimo would smack the top of his head to make sure he saw it. Despite them saving his tail, the monkey didn't trust the dolphins.

After some convincing from Mick and Tamm, Hemingway eventually agreed to get him back on course for Miami. Their tales of presents the Nazis might've left for him, like floating sea mines and corrosive sargasso spores, did the trick. The Pilar would rendezvous with the Office's sub hunters, and the professionals would take it from there. If anyone could find the desperate, wounded U-boats, it was the vaunted Jean Chastel.

Mick had Saxon note the approximate location of the battle site on a map for the Jean, then retired to the stern of the ship. Marge had her hands full juggling Baby and Basil, though Qutat was able to help her calm them. Cypress gathered up the strange, six-toed cat in his arms and nestled in next to Marge, stroking the purring animal's gray head. She fell asleep in minutes.

Mick patted himself down, eager to find a cigarette, but had no luck. His deck must have fallen out of his pocket during the chaos. It was probably in the Gulf Stream and halfway to Bermuda by now.

Marge was smiling, cradling the alien-ugly Baby. The rat thing looked up at her with beady pink eyes, staring like she was its mother. Mick shook his head, then leaned back on a crate to rest.

A hand tapped him on his shoulder. Mick squinted to see Massimo crouched above his head. The monkey was swaying where he was perched, clutching most of a fifth of pilfered bourbon.

“What do you have there, buddy?” Mick asked. The monkey smiled, showing off a full set of sharp chompers. It pulled the stopper out of the bottle and chucked it overboard, then took a slug that would have been impressive for a full-grown man, much less a twenty-pound monkey. Once it was done, it wiped its mouth on the back of its hairy arm and held out the bottle. Mick chuckled and took it. He scrubbed the glass clean with a salt-sprayed sleeve, then took a sip himself. Warm, oaky, floral heat. He reasoned that the hooch would be strong enough to kill off any of Massimo's backwash and had another taste.

Massimo climbed down off the box and sat next to Mick. He held out his tiny hands, and Mick gave him the bourbon. Massimo slumped back against the crate, just like Mick, and took another pull off the bottle. He slouched over and watched the waves.

The dolphins followed close, leaping through rainbows, chattering and having fun.

Mickey and Massimo watched them play, neither saying a word to the other. The passed the bottle back and forth until it was empty, and both of them were passed out by the time the Jean Chastel happened upon them.

SUNDAY NIGHT, JULY 28, 1942
TOBACCO ROAD, BRICKELL
MIAMI, FLORIDA

“For a bar that is so God-awful ugly on the outside,” Mickey was saying, splashing his whisky-neat while he gesticulated, “They really got some good hooch in here.”

“Every drink tastes better when someone else is footing the bill,” Gator told him. The Cajun held up an empty beer bottle, which the bartender promptly swapped for a full one.

“Hemingway tab?”

“Ça c’est bon, cher,” Gator replied with a wink. She blew a cloud of smoke in his face and moved on to the next customer.

“Nice try, Casanova,” Mick said. He slurped on his liquor and watched the room.

Hemingway was holding court, relaying stories of Spain and Bimini and Africa to a circle of Crooks and sailors off the Jean Chastel. The sub-hunter had only caught one U-boat, a tricky sumbitch who'd tried to be clever and trail the Pilar submerged after the whole 'getting hit with their own torpedoes' debacle. A few depth charges helped it stay submerged for good. The rest of the wolf pack had scattered. The Chastel had gone into port with the Pilar, using their own FDR stamps to secure short-notice, deep-draft berths at the 5^th Street Marina, displacing a few disgruntled but ultimately patriotic yachters in the process.

Most of the Crooks were powerful drunk, having been celebrating since the torpedo strike at nine in the morning. Mickey had first only gotten a drink at the bar to assuage the headache Massimo had given him, but his instincts had kicked in after that initial sip and now he was in a state himself.

“What are are y'all doing with those critters?” Gator asked. He was practically yelling to be heard over the booming Hemingway.

“Did you ask Cypress?” Mick wondered.

“Yes, I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“I ain't got the clearance.”

“Well you put your neck on the line, I say that's clearance enough,” Mick declared. He sipped his drink again. “We, and by 'we' I mean the Office, 'cause I'm not fixing to shovel any monkey turds, we got a zoo kind of thing. The krauts have been cooking up weird animals for years, so we got to have somewhere to put 'em. They'll go there.”

“Y'all going to experiment on 'em?”

“Course not,” Mickey huffed. “We just want to keep 'em out of the Nazis' mitts. Besides, Marge wouldn't let 'em lay finger on Baby. She can be mean persuasive when she wants to be.”

When Cypress announced he was taking the animals to his secure containment facility, Tamm wasn't the only one objecting. Marge had put her foot down, refusing to let Baby out of her sight. The fact that the mutant rat wouldn't let go of her helped her argument. Keaton lined up the Minerva to scoop them. She was an ultra-fast propellor-driven transport train, so Marge, Cypress, a monkey, a cat, a rat, and the three biologists who'd arrived aboard the Chastel would be at Zoo Base in Oak Ridge by midnight.

“The G-man wasn't too happy to see you take 'em,” Gator pointed out.

“That one was over his pay grade,” Mick said. Assistant Director Tamm had gotten dressed down by his boss, who had gotten dressed down by the president, who had gotten an advisory call from Chief Inspector Klavin regarding the animals' importance to the war effort. Once Tamm had re-attached his chewed-off ear, he and Leddy caught their plane out of Miami, along with Sparacello, O'Laughlin, and Basil. The Irishman and his dog were going to New York to get deported, while Sparacello was returning there for the first time since he'd gone on the run with Massimo, sporting a clean rap sheet and a Bureau tail tracking his every step for the next six months.

“Where are you headed?” Mick asked. Gator took a long drink, draining the bottle while he considered how to answer.

“Well, my kids are in Lafayette,” he said. “But so's my warrant. Long as your boy Keaton keeps his end up, I only got three more runs before I'm off scot-free for that bit of contested materials procurement.”

“Helping to steal a ton of dynamite from a mob boss ain't easy to erase. But Keaton's a straight shooter: if he shook on it, he'll make it happen,” Mick assured him.

“That's the read I got off him,” Gator replied.

“Why'd Hemingway punch him?” Mick asked, suddenly remembering Keaton's indoor sunglasses and the shiner beneath them. Gator guffawed at the memory, momentarily drawing Hemingway's attention. Mick had left the rambunctious author a black eye to match Keaton's.

“Hemingway didn't like some of Keaton's insinuations,” Gator finally answered, tactful as he could and dry as a day-old dinner roll. “Hemingway thought 'no drinking' meant that Keaton was calling him a lightweight, that 'keep your receipts' meant he was a cheat, and that 'disclose all sources' made him a snitch. He took some offense to those insinuations.”

“Insinuating'll do it,” Mick said, taking another sip and surveyed his present watering hole.

Tobacco Road was his kind of place. It was a two-story dive, painted distressingly teal on the outside but kept dark and familiar within. It had been a speakeasy a few years past and had seen its share of shutdowns, but it had bounced back. Miami was growing around it, though, and soon enough the bar would feel like a relic. The world kept moving.

The crick Mick'd worked into his back from hours on the choppy seas was throbbing again, and when he tried to re-adjust how he was sitting it sent lightning through every one of his swollen, abused joints. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck to a series of awful pops that were loud enough to make Gator wince.

“Got anything for that?” Gator asked.

“Yeah,” Mick replied. He took a big gulp of his stiff drink. It added a bit of a cotton buffer between his grinding bones, just enough to help him ignore the aches.

Hemingway's voice boomed louder than the juke box; he was reaching the crescendo of his tale, spilling daiquiri with each wild pantomime. He was absolutely owning his rapt audience. Mick couldn't hear exactly what he was saying, but he spoke with such fervor that Mick didn't need to hear to understand where Hemingway was and what he was conquering there. Although the way he was holding his arms out just then, Mick couldn't tell if he was cradling a woman or a marlin. Only when he lined up his hands and aimed down invisible sights did Mickey realize it was a machine-gun. The crowd laughed and cheered as Hemingway gleefully mowed down an imaginary battalion himself. Even the Spaniards who had fought alongside him in the those same battles beamed. His story was far better than the mud and blood that they remembered.

Stories always are.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Story by Bonnie Baldwin. Art by Bruce Conners.