The next morning I showed up for work at the Sand Key condos just before seven. For some reason, the regional supervisor, a big bald guy, and tough as nails Viet Nam vet, now in his late sixties, was there. Among the security guards, he was most commonly referred to as the executioner. He was the guy who did all the firing for the company with the service contract for most of the Sand Key condo complexes. I’d only seen him twice since I started working there. On both of those occasions, some guy got fired. I wondered if my time was up. He was talking with the same guard that I had relieved the day before. I walked over towards the two men who saw me coming and turned to greet me.
The supervisor said, “You look like you’ve been ridden hard and locked out of the barn. What happened to you?”
Could you get fired for looking like a chronic case of fatigue? I hoped not. I gave him the short form answer. “My girlfriend got mugged, and I was at the hospital until two in the morning.”
“I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend Joe. Is she going to be okay?”
“The docs tell me that it’s too early to say. She was still unconscious when I phoned the hospital this morning, but she’s in really rough shape.”
“I’ll try to get someone here to relieve you as early in the afternoon as I can.”
“Thanks.” The executioner had a heart after all.
“Meanwhile, we got a report from one of the older residents, Mrs. Pitney on the third floor, that she saw two young guys who didn’t belong here checking out the cars in the parking lot real late last night. She said they were young white trash and wanted to know how they had got onto her property. Like she owns the whole fuckin complex, and we’re put here by God to look after her special needs. She’s made a few unproven reports before, so she has a zero reliability coefficient with me. But I still got to fill out another report anyway. Keep your eyes open okay.”
“Sure.”
The supervisor and the other guard left together—one to go home to bed—one to go and write out another report. I decided to start with a quick walk around the property. It was too early for most of the occupants to be mobile. And I wouldn’t have to worry too much about signing in any of the resident’s guests just yet.
I’ve been told that at one time, because of its size and the number of its occupants, this condo complex always had two security people on duty. One guy controlled the gates and recorded all comings and goings. The other guy walked the property. They switched responsibilities every other hour. Then, someone on the condo board decided that an electronic entry gate with a regularly changing entry code supplied only to the residents, would mean that only one guard would be needed to patrol the property and to respond to the needs of the owners. The resident’s guests and any delivery drivers were expected to ring the buzzer at the gate to notify the guard on duty that he was needed at the front gate. And abbra cadabra, only one guard is needed to do the work of two. I guess even multi-millionaires are looking for ways to save a buck these days. Maybe that’s how they got to be millionaires. Of course, the problem was that some of the permanent residents gave the secret code to their guests so that they wouldn’t have to wait at the gate for a guard to show up if he was on patrol. Nothing is perfect.
Two “white trash” young guys looking for cars, he had said. I wondered if Billy and Sammy were out looking for me last night. Maybe they found out from Mia where I might be. I took out the Blackberry Max had given and called Frank. It was a short phone call.
Sometime after one thirty, and just as my forehead had banged off the top of the small desk in the guard’s shack for the ninety-fourth time, my promised relief showed up. He was a new hire—a nineteen-year old kid named Ralph. He had buckteeth, slicked back blonde hair and a tattoo of a red double heart with twin piercing daggers on his right bicep. He seemed like a nice kid even though he wasn’t too bright. I had to take him through the basic procedures three times. When he assured me confidently that he had the protocols down and that he would be okay to get on with the job, I walked tiredly to my Jag and drove home.
On my drive back to Mrs. Reilly’s little bungalow, I had planned the rest of my day. I would sleep for a few hours and then go back to the hospital just to be near Mia. I would get some flowers to take to her. But I needed to sleep first. I parked my car in front of the garage, closed the door and locked it. As I entered my small room, I noticed that the light on the answering machine was flashing red. I assumed it was the hospital, so I called the emergency department at Tampa Bay General. During the morning, I had phoned nine times claiming to be a different relative each time. The nurses were getting used to me. I admired their patience. I had to know that Mia’s was still a part of my world. There were no updates—she had been stabilized but remained unconscious and in critical condition. A plastic surgeon had looked at her x-rays and stated that additional surgery was absolutely certain if she survived. There was nothing that I could do.
After I finished with the hospital, I phoned the numbers that Langdon had given me. I wanted to find out if he had had any luck with the leads he was following. I didn’t get a pick up on any of his numbers. I left a brief message on his answering machine.