Floaters

ASSASSINATION

DONALD PASCUAL, OTHERWISE known by his friends as Donnie, was found dead in the parking lot behind his apartment. No one saw the shooting. Several residents who knew Donnie heard the shot. A car, at high speed, left the scene, said the newscaster.

I jump from the couch, run to the kitchen and dial 911. Darwin, what’s the matter? You’re pale. You’re shaking, says my ever observant wife.

It was only hours ago that I sat behind my desk at the warehouse. The weather beaten old used desk…the desk with the bronze plaque announcing in capital letters, DARWIN KOLINSKY - WAREHOUSE MANAGER.

Donnie, my employee, tells me about the theft of a trailer load of copper tubing from the warehouse. The memory of that conversation floods back.

I had asked him, Donnie, you say you have some knowledge or information about the theft?

I picture him kneading his baseball cap like a frightened school kid when he asks me. Keep me out of this please Mr. Kolinsky. I’ll tell you what I discovered, but that’s as far as it goes. Can you live with that?

I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t let him off that easy so I said, Please take a seat Donnie. I understand. It may not be that easy if I have to involve the law. What did you discover?

Nervous and wiping his sweaty hands on his pant leg he finally looks up and starts out, "You know how things slow way down during the lunch hour? That’s when I saw the theft and how it was done.

"There was an oily spill at a delivery door near me, slick and dangerous. It had to be cleared off. You know those pallets loaded with copper tubing near the back? A man…no, two men…one on the forklift and the other at the truck door were stealing pallets of tubing.

"They both had company shirts on.

"Their truck was hooked to a POD, a container. You know, one of those PODs people use to move stuff from one house to another? I saw this from the other end of the warehouse. The truck with the POD on the back was not one of the trucks we usually see out on the loading bay.

"I could see just enough inside the POD to know there was more than one pallet in there. It was all copper tubing.

They…there were two of them…closed the door to the POD and drove off. Donald looked down at his boots, then at the door.

I remember his look as I moved around to lean on the front of the desk. Timidly, he looked up at me. I asked, Did you happen to catch the logo on the POD or truck?

I did think it was odd to see a POD being used for this so I did notice part of the name on the POD. It was ‘Pond Street Moving.’ Isn’t that a related company? Why would they rent a POD like that for a robbery?

How do you know that wasn’t just the completion of an order? I had asked, curious.

Perking up as he stood, Oh Mr. Kolinsky. Like I said, it looked very suspicious, so after the man with the company shirt on, drove the forklift back inside, I got a good look. I’d never seen him before. There’s a lot of turnover here so at first I didn’t worry about it. After I finished my lunch in the shade of the overhang on the platform, it occurred to me that if it was a regular pick-up there would be a shipping copy on the clipboard for the accountant. There was none there showing any such order.

Trying to encourage him, I said, Okay Donnie, it isn’t a lot of money, but if it’s a theft I’d like to get to the bottom of it. I will try to keep you out of it if I can. Fair enough? I remember him smiling, he thanked me, donned his hat and left the office.

To follow protocol, when he didn’t answer his phone I left a message summarizing the event for Horace, my boss, before leaving the office.

That was the last I saw of Donnie.

My wife, looking up from the easy chair with her paperback book on her lap now says to me, Darwin, honey, could you turn it up a bit. I want to hear the news.

With my feet up and a Coke in my hand I’m watching the ten o’clock news, my mind on other things. Louder now, I catch the name, the name of a murder victim. Donald, Donnie Pascual…my employee.

After my 911 call, I look around my comfortable great room. Life wasn’t always so good. One night, when money was scarce as an A from a teacher, I had broken into a home. There was no car in the carport. I pilfered the big screen TV and several electronic devices. I sold them to a man who worked with me as a hod carrier. He gave me seventy-five dollars…far below their real value even then.

Another time, with a girl friend, both of us high on too much of her Dad’s whiskey, we broke into a neighbor’s house. We were caught by the owner. We thought he was out-of-town. Surprised by the unlocked front door, the owner entered, waving a pistol as he confronted us.

She was about to hand me a sandwich. It was a ham and cheese, toasted on his stove top. I was sentenced to six months in detention and actually spent four. That was the first of several stretches in the pokey, incarcerated as a juvenile.

One evening, a man I met in a bar made me a job offer. Horace Serrano is his name. I later learned he was not a compassionate man. In fact, to this day, I have no idea of why the last manager to hold the manager position had disappeared so suddenly. In fact, the man’s check is still there in his employee file in the cabinet. A check dated almost three years past.

I’m not a bad man. I just need money from time to time. Real jobs need credentials. Mine are all bad. So I have my own little business. I don’t pay taxes and don’t have employees. Life’s good.

As before, I drive the Mustang out of the area. It is too easy.

I stole the black, powerful car out of a garage in one of those adult retirement communities. The occupants likely left the Phoenix area in their other car when the temperatures went over one hundred. The theft was easy because the old folks made it easy.

Car keys almost always hang near the door just inside the house from the garage.

I paid a teenager, a kid who lived near my target house. The boy lived outside the retirement area. I gave him twenty bucks to break into the home and to do it well after dark. If no alarm sounds, it is good.

If not, if the alarm goes off, I always go to another over fifty-five area to start over.

I’m good at this.

Generally I spot a house that has no alarm. If the house has a fake alarm sign in the yard or a sticker on a window, a quick internet search for the company will tell me.

I never use a silencer on the gun. The jobs don’t pay enough and buying one is the mark of a thief. After seven of these jobs, the most I have been paid is eight thousand. That job was a mistake. I barely got away from the cops.

This last one was two thousand, but it was quick money.

I never leave finger prints and always leave the car near an area I can walk away from and catch a bus.

The guy didn’t have a chance. I didn’t even know his name until the news that evening. Donald was his name.

The next day a Police Investigator stops by my office. After an introduction he shows me his badge. The detective begins with a few questions about Donald.

I recap the conversation I had with Donnie from before, then he asks, Did he actually stay at work after telling you about the theft?

I tell him, Donnie…Mr. Pascual, told me he had a headache yesterday afternoon.

Did you personally talk with him, or did someone else tell you that? the officer continues, pen in hand.

He found me in the shelves and told me about his migraine. Donnie is…was a good worker and never late so I wished him well and told him to go home.

After making a note, the officer asks, Did he seem nervous?

Now that you mention it, he did. He left his lunch bucket next to the time clock when he punched out. He brings his lunch so he never leaves the bucket. It’s red with blue lettering and well used. It’s his…or maybe his family’s now. I’ll be happy to give it to you.

He shakes his head and says, Please give me a call if anything more occurs to you, handing me his card.

I sit down and take a drink from the side drawer of the credenza behind my desk.

Horace Serrano, the man who overlooked my previous record of legal problems and short-time jobs, comes to mind. A hard man to work for, I shake with the thought of how he might react to this little problem.

The last manager just vanished. He didn’t even come by for his check.

Should I be worried?

CHAPTER TWO

INVESTIGATORS

LEAVES ARE FALLING from the aspens.

My husband Bo, my partner, friend and lover, covers my world like a tapestry. Now, splitting wood and stacking it neatly—it’s musical. I watch from the kitchen window and the old feeling warms me again. Times like this, I just want to run out and hug him—kiss him like our first kiss.

Corey Boland…Bo…to me, is my partner. Not just in the epic lover way…he is that…but in the provider sense. Blue eyed, bushy dark brows and lashes I covet. Not big. Not tall, but well-proportioned and strong. Bo, here and now, making the chips fly. I’m Sindala Boland and I’m loving it.

The tops of the pines are swaying with the breeze. Summers’ given way to fall with all its colors.

The Greer Lakes, the three small man-made reservoirs nearby, will soon freeze over. Water flows down from Mount Baldy and forms the Little Colorado River which has filled the lakes as high as they’ve been in years. Filled by rain, almost daily rain in the late summer season, comforts me. Rain that falls from the high, pure clouds through the crystal clear, pollution-free air. Rain that covers the hills and the mountain with life-giving purity.

I love this place. Tranquility is it’s primary virtue. On the western slope above the hamlet of Greer, near Arizona’s eastern boundary with New Mexico, sits our cabin in the woods. A spot on the Earth with the mantra, ‘No Bad Days.’

Last week, our teenaged son, John, drove his old Jeep down the hills back to our home in Peoria, a suburb of Phoenix, to get ready for the next school year. As a senior, he is THE MAN. This will be a great year for him.

I almost lost Bo back in the day. We became friends by the repetitive, daily schedule that seemed part of our campus treks. Not that we planned it. As coincidences will happen, either in classroom or hallway, we evolved as friends…confidants…even in group events we sought each other out.

Bo has a jealous streak. One day he saw me walking on the University campus with Bruce, an old acquaintance from my high school days. At the table in the quad where we often met for lunch, Bo was reserved, even serious, limiting his talk to English Lit and the new assignment. We took the class together. We didn’t sit together in class, but being right before lunch we would end up together in the Quad eating pre-packaged, cellophane wrapped, sandwiches and drinking sodas.

I knew what the problem was, the jealousy I mean, but it didn’t last. He asked me to go to a dance, I accepted. We left early. I kissed him.

Our two families participated in the wedding celebration. We committed there in front of our friends and other people, parental friends we never knew, to be faithful.

I’ve never wavered.

I worry about Bo.

Splitting wood is work. On an autumn morning like this one, I chop, split and stack, getting the firewood ready. Really though, I just think and remember the good things. Sindy is the best of those thoughts. Balanced, that’s what Sindala is. Since college, she keeps me balanced. I have a temper. Not a fiery…jump to conclusions…type temper. I sense dishonesty in others. I don’t like it. Sometimes patience is the right course and Sindala…Sindy, my wife and life mate, pulls me back on those occasions when I need it.

I received many job offers even before graduation. A result of my exceptional grades at the University.

The next four years of apprenticeship experience as a Junior Forensic Accountant, while satisfying didn’t do much for our standard of living. After the grunt work of tying down the facts in a fraud or defalcation case I would be the one on the stand as a witness in the subsequent trial.

You might think a conviction would be a celebratory event for the prosecutor and of course it is for the supervisory Partner. A salary with an occasional bonus? Peanuts.

Water-cooler gossip always included an estimate…usually inflated. The numbers could be staggering. One trial was estimated to have brought in over one-hundred thousand dollars for the Partner. The attorney won the case based on my data.

That’s the day Sindala, the balance maker, and I had a heart-to-heart brainstorming and budget session.

The next day I tendered my resignation.

Three weeks later I signed my first contract. This time I was on the side of the accused. The contracted fee came to about four times my previous salary for a month. I got paid immediately. Sindy took the check to the bank, bought some stunning new clothes, had her auburn hair highlighted with blonde and came back smiling…and balanced.

Somewhere in that time frame she told me she was pregnant.

I’ve never looked back.

There is always a loser in any court decision. More than once I was threatened, sometimes right there in the courtroom. Not long ago, I had gathered more data than what was needed for a conviction. It was data that could have put three more people in jail for a long time. The kind of crimes that had no statute of limitations. The attorney involved had serious health problems and decided not to use my data. I keep those files as a kind of insurance just in case.

As it turned out, they blamed me, not the attorney, for the result. After the verdict, the three cornered me in the hallway and requested the unused data in no uncertain terms.

I told them where to go.

CHAPTER THREE

ASSIGNMENTS

MY HUSBAND, COREY Boland, is not an easy man to understand. After eighteen years of marriage, you’d think I would know it all. I love him anyway. My heart still races when he strokes my hair or gives my cheek a peck during a movie and at other times for sure.

I get jealous, sometimes even mad when he pays attention to another woman. I’m not alone in thinking his features are handsome, sexy.

Since leaving the organized, big company, world, he never wears a tie unless to step up an impression in the mind of some criminal or business person. He’s best in casual slacks but never loafers. You can’t run in them, he tells me.

When on a case as a private investigator, usually with a money crime in the background, he’s all business. Since leaving the forensic accounting world as an employee, he has put a dozen or more white collars in the slammer. They usually don’t like him…surprise…and some remember him too well.

He still likes