A Crab a Rustler and an Ostrich: A Short Story Read online



  A Crab, a Rustler,

  and an Ostrich

  A Short Story by

  Edward J. McFadden III

  Text copyright © 2013 Edward J. McFadden III

  All Rights Reserved

  A Crab, a Rustler, and an Ostrich first

  appeared in Crimespree Magazine #38

  This edition of A Crab, a Rustler, and an

  Ostrich was published by

  Quick Hits Publishing

  See www.edwardmcfadden.com for all

  things Ed.

  This is a work of fiction.

  All characters, events and organizations depicted are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events or organizations is purely coincidental. The use of any company product names are for literary effect only and used without permission.

  This story may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, except for selected passages for the purpose of critical reviews, without written permission from Quick Hits Publishing.

  A Crab, a Rustler, and an Ostrich

  As long as the waiter kept bringing her frozen Rum Runners, Stacey Turner had no intention of moving from the small beach cabana she had gotten up at three in the morning to procure. At the Trade Winds Resort & Spa, putting a fresh towel on a beach chair was akin to planting a flag on foreign soil, it was yours, but there were rules. You had to place your towel after the beach had been cleaned-up, and the chairs were lined up like soldiers, in order to have a valid claim. Having gotten up at 6am one morning to find the best spots on the beach already taken, Stacey was now among the ultra anal who set their alarms for 3am, got up and had a drink, walked to the beach and planted their flag, then went back to sleep until after breakfast.

  The double lounge chair half covered by a canvas cabana sat at the edge of the beach, away from the main throng, and the Atlantic Ocean stretched out before Stacey, its azure color and perfume-like sea breeze lulling her toward sleep. The day was clear, and hot, and the sun burn index was at DEFCON one. Newbies who vacationed at Trade Winds often found themselves in the resort infirmary with cases of sunburn so severe that management now handed out sunburn warning and prevention pamphlets upon guest arrival.

  Stacey had been to the east coast of Florida before, and had lathered her petite 52-year-old body with number 1000 sun block. When she got back to Chicago, her friends at work would harass her and ask if she had gone skiing, because her ghost white face would be marred only by sunburn on her cheeks, which looked more like windburn.

  Stacey was a fair-skinned redhead, her sea green eyes the only stunning feature on an otherwise common face. She lifted her drink, taking a long pull as she examined two men walking down the beach toward her, and her eyebrows lifted with excitement and suspicion. As a fifty-two-year-old single girl, the world could be a dangerous place. Stacey wasn’t beautiful, but she was attractive, and men made overtures to her all the time, but she was usually prudish, her divorce of ten years prior still a gaping wound.

  But not this week.

  Stacey had made up her mind to have some fun, and meet a man. She could feel her cheeks getting hot as she watched the men approach, and as they passed, she turned toward the beach grass to her right, feigning disinterest. But through the sides of her sunglasses, she watched the men pass. One of them, the older of the two, flashed her a smile and waved, but she ignored him.

  That’s when she saw what she thought was a huge spider. Protruding from the beach grass beside her, six craggy legs could be seen atop the sand. White with red stripes, Stacey’s mind quickly calculated the size of the spider as she grabbed her drink with one hand and her pocketbook with the other. The breeze picked up and sand puffed across the beach, but Stacey’s eyes remained focused on the creature.

  The legs shuffled backward, and Stacey saw that what she had originally thought was a spider was in fact a Florida stone crab. She relaxed, and finished her drink with one long pull. The crab was shuffling backward, its large carapace revealing itself through the swaying beach grass. Eight striped legs trundled through the sand, and Stacey saw the giant claws that served as one of the state’s delicacies.

  Then she screamed.

  Several people around her leapt from their chairs, running to her aid and asking what was wrong, but all she could do was point toward the beach grass. Then another woman screamed as the stone crab scuffled past her, the bloody stub of a finger in its left claw.

  *****

  Claystone County Deputy Sheriff Jake Santo pulled at his mustache as he rolled through the back roads of Middleburrow, Florida. Anger lines that faded to worry lines creased his tanned face, and his displeasure was easy to see in his stone-like features. There had been several complaints of a loose ostrich in his small middle-class community, and that meant aggravation for him. Aggravation he was sure Lester Truemont had caused.

  Lester’s farm housed a variety of exotic animals, many of which magically found their way to the dining tables of Florida’s best restaurants via a series of loopholes in the law that he exploited, some said illegally. Ostrich was Lester’s biggest bread winner, and his birds never failed to break a leg, or to be born with a malady that offered a slaughter exemption.

  Lester sold llamas as pets, and a variety of game and ostrich meat to local gourmet distributors for restaurant consumption, and it was the latter that constantly caused Santo extra work due to investigations by state and federal authorities—none of which had ever resulted in a conviction, or even a mark on Lester’s record. Lester Truemont was the dirt that lived between the cracks of American society, where environmentalists and animal rights activists ate ostrich and dolphin steaks.

  Lester’s farm sat inland of the Atlantic Ocean more than twenty miles, and was nothing more than hardpan that his family had pounded and molded into real estate over three generations. Sugarcane fields surrounded the property, and only a sparse smattering of scrub pine and an old rusted metal fence marked the end of the ostrich and llama grazing areas.

  Santo saw the herd of ostriches bunched together at the end of the small range like log-jammed bumper cars. Grown ostriches can be seven feet tall and can cover 20 miles a day, and 60 percent of their daily activity is devoted to walking. When they are confined to a small area they develop leg problems, which was yet another legal reason to make them the other red meat.

  Santo brought his cruiser to a stop in front of a house with wood shingles. Weeds grew in the flower beds, and the house looked like it had never been painted, the dried shingles having been dirt blasted clean by central Florida’s sand and dust storms. Santo didn’t like having to see Lester, but if pushed, would admit to eating his ostrich on occasion. How could he not? It tasted like beef and had more protein and less fat and cholesterol than chicken.

  As Santo exited his patrol car, Lester appeared at his front door, watching the lawman deliberately as he pushed through his screen door and headed down the cracked concrete walkway his grandfather had laid. It was no secret that Lester hated Santo and Santo hated Lester. It was a relationship of dislike that went back to when they had scuffled on the playground in elementary school, and continued throughout both men’s lives. Santo had gone away to college, played football, joined the Marines, then returned home and started his career in law enforcement. Lester, he was doing the same thing he had all his life: living off his great-grandparent’s land and making a buck any way he could.

  Lester was fat by any standard, and dirty. His faded overalls were covered with dirt and animal blood, his T-shirt, which read “Crazy Rabbit, Dicks are for Chicks,” was so faded and smudged with dirt that its o
riginal color was unclear. He wore oversized rubber work gloves, and as he came forward to meet Santo, neither man offered a hand or any greeting.

  “Using those oversized enemas again?” mocked Santo, referring to the gloves.

  Lester didn’t answer, and started toward his barn, which was in pristine shape and sat next to and slightly behind his dilapidated house.

  “What do you want? A donation?” asked Lester, a sleazy smirk spreading across his face.

  “One of your ostriches is loose?” Santo half asked, half stated.

  “Yeah. Big bitch blew right past me last night, bolted across the sugarcane fields like the hounds of hell were after him,” answered Lester.

  “They kind of were,” mumbled Santo, then he said, “You knew and didn’t call us? I can arrest you for that, you know? And I'm sure the fine for causing a public nuisance with a wild animal that is listed as a potentially deadly predator is hefty.”

  Lester laughed. “Yeah, deadly predator.”

  “Listen up. The last call we got was from Darma Avenue, outside of town by the mall. You get down there and capture that bird or I’ll haul your ass into jail and put you in a hole so deep even your shit-for-brains father won’t be able to find you. Savvy?” Santo was good when he was playing tough cop, but Lester knew him too well.

  “Uh huh,” said Lester, as he pulled a beer from a bucket of ice just inside the shade of the barn. “Why do you hate me so much, Jake? ‘Causea that time I kicked your ass in front of Linda?” Lester’s greasy hair fell across his face, and he licked his lips and took a long pull on the beer.

  “You kill animals for a living, illegally,” said Santo. “I just can’t prove it.”

  “I supply delicacies to the most prominent people in Florida,” said Lester with confidence, knowing full well that Judge MacKenzie would never give up his ostrich steaks—maybe not even if Lester killed someone.

  “But as of this moment, it’s still illegal,” pushed Santo.

  “Yeah?” said Lester, sitting on a bale of hay and taking another long pull on his beer. “I kinda see it like pissing on the lava rocks in a sauna, tasteless but not illegal.”

  “As usual, you see things wrong,” said Santo, as he stepped toward Lester. Putting his index finger firmly on the man’s chest, Santo said, “Go get the damn bird. Now!” With that, Santo turned on his heel and headed back to his patrol car.

  Lester watched as Santo’s cruiser disappeared into a cloud of dust. Then, gingerly, he removed his gloves, revealing a gauze-wrapped index finger that was drenched in blood.

  *****

  Figuring the loose ostrich was the highlight of his day, Deputy Sheriff Santo made his way east, toward the coast, where he intended to have lunch at Betsy’s diner, where he ate most of his meals while on duty. But just as Santo began to smell the sweet aroma of Betsy’s meatloaf wafting on the flat Florida air, a call about a severed finger detoured him to the Trade Winds Resort & Spa.

  Santo hated Trade Winds, and all the other resorts like it that brought money and trouble to his piece of paradise. Aside from destroying the natural beauty of the sea coast, the wealthy New Yorkers and Chicagoans that populated the resorts were usually rude, and openly showed disdain for “back country” lawmen like him.

  “OK, where is this damn finger? No one came out to meet me,” Santo radioed dispatch, as he waited in the turnaround circle at the resort’s main entrance.

  “We had the finger picked up. It’s getting analyzed locally. The Sheriff wants answers to this one before the press gets hold of it.”

  “Locally? You kidding me? We don’t have…”

  “We’re going to run the DNA through our local database before getting the staties involved.”

  This made sense to Santo when he thought about it. If a tourist had lost a finger, or even an upstanding citizen, a police report or medical report would be on file. Since there was no history of any incident that involved a severed finger, it made sense to check the database of local losers before expanding the search and including the staties, who Santo hated more than the tourists. “OK,” said Santo. “Let me know if you find anything. Oh, and if you get one more call about that loose ostrich, have Lester Truemont picked up.”

  “10-4,” answered the dispatcher, and the radio crackled, then fell silent.

  *****

  Santo wiped his brow of sweat as he entered the Trade Winds Resort & Spa, and waited for five minutes before an assistant manager appeared and lead him to Stacey Turner’s room, were she was resting from the morning’s events. Knocking several times, Stacey only came to the door after Santo announced it was the police.

  “I’m sorry to have to disturb you Mrs.—”

  “I am on vacation,” said the woman, looking at Santo as if he had cut the finger from its victim and tossed it in her morning tea.

  “Yes, I understand,” said Santo, looking Stacey up and down. Santo thought she was quite pretty. A few years his junior, the redhead looked like a fifty-five-year-old Nicole Kidman. “I just need to ask you a few questions. Won’t take but a minute.” Then Santo flashed his prize smile, and the iceberg that was Stacey Turner began to melt.

  “OK, please come in. Coffee?” she asked, motioning toward a cart filled with drinks and pastries. “The resort’s idea of restitution. I should sue.”

  “For what?” asked Santo. But before the ice began to harden again, he said, “Where’s your husband? Don’t you want him here for this?”

  It was flirtatious, and Stacey knew it. “No husband. You?” she asked, a slight smile revealing itself through the blizzard.

  “No husband, one ex-wife,” he said, and she beamed.

  Santo ended up having coffee and some pastry. They sat on Stacey’s balcony, the gentle sea breeze beginning to turn sour as the dark clouds of a storm pushed across the ocean toward them.

  It was 11:30am when Santo’s portable radio crackled to life. “Jake, you out there? Over.”

  “I’m here, go ahead,” said Santo, smiling at Stacey, who watched him like he was James Bond.

  “Strange news. We ID’d the finger.”

  Santo and Stacey exchanged surprised looks. “Really? That was lightning fast. And?”

  “Your old friend Lester Truemont. We had a DNA sample in our unauthorized database from when he was accused of raping that college girl a few years back.”

  “Lester? I was just out there this morning. Can’t be,” said Santo, then he looked at Stacey. “Can it?”

  *****

  Thunder rocked the land, and rain fell in torrents as Santo made his way back to Lester’s farm. Questions filled his mind as he drove: who had severed Lester’s finger? Why? Why had he hidden the fact? How had the digit gotten twenty miles to the ocean? Like everything to do with Lester, things were starting to smell like turds.

  Santo speculated that Lester had once again hooked-up with the wrong crowd and was now paying for his stupidity. Gamblers, loan sharks, prostitutes, and hard-nosed food distributors had heaped a ton of misfortune on Lester over the years, but like a drug addict who is unable to stop hurting himself, Lester always crawled into the mud with his own kind. He most likely owed the wrong people money, and the finger was partial payment.

  Then there were his so-called legal entanglements. The staties and the feds suspected that Lester routinely did everything in his power to bring as many ostrich to market as he possibly could. This allegedly involved breaking ostrich legs with baseball bats, and lining their feed with chemicals that enhanced the chances of leg deformities, digestive diseases, reproductive disorders, and a variety of maladies that didn’t affect the meat. All these afflictions qualified for a slaughter exemption. Also, in addition to spacecraft, racing dogs, bibles, stadium skyboxes, and bottled water, ostrich food was tax exempt due to the projected boom in ostrich farming that had yet to materialize.

  Pulling off the dirt road that led to Lester’s farm, Santo hid the car in a small stand of scrub pine, and then crept around the back of Lest
er’s barn. The rain was a mist now, nothing more than an annoyance that soaked Santo through. He was determined to do what the staties and feds had been unable to do: catch Lester in the act. If he could witness Lester hurting an animal, or find a sample of feed that had an abundance of chemicals, he could put the nasty shit where he belonged: in jail.

  Santo froze in his tracks as he heard a large thump, then Lester yelled, “Tonight’s your night, bitch! You ain’t gonna get another finger. Then you run off, get me in the shit with the law. We’ll see.” Santo heard another smack, and Lester yelled again.

  The rear barn door was open a crack, and Santo peered in, the light of a large lamp illuminating the interior. Lester stood with his back to a wall, holding an aluminum bat in his hands, his eyes raging seas of hate. The ostrich pecked at Lester with its large beak, moving its massive frame closer, preparing to strike. Lester swung wildly, missing, and the ostrich showed its superior intelligence.

  With a sharp, karate-like kick, the ostrich lashed out with its spindly right leg, connecting with a solid blow to Lester’s chest that sent him flying into the barn wall with a loud thump! Lester swung his bat again, and this time the ostrich bit at his hand as he swung, and there was a loud wail. The ostrich was affixed to Lester, and the fat man struggled to free himself like a fish dangling at the end of a hook. Then there was another wail, and blood splattered on the barn wall.

  The ostrich had torn off another of Lester’s fingers.

  “Two fingers you giant turkey!!!” yelled Lester, swinging wildly at the ostrich’s legs one last time.

  That’s when Santo figured he had put the ostrich through enough, and stepped into the barn. “OK, that’s enough, kids.” Then, faking amazement, he said, “And what would you be doing with that bat?”

  “The thing tried to kill me,” said Lester, slowly backing away from the ostrich and heading for his shotgun, which was next to an old refrigerator in the rear of the barn.

  “And what do we have here,” said Santo, lifting a bag of powder that looked like cocaine. “Looks like blow, but why do I think it’s a different kind of poison? Real smart, Lester. I bet you even have the staties come in and verify your slaughter diagnosis.”