Nine Minutes (19 page)

Grunt and I
looked at each other with the same expression. We both could understand why Moe
had saved her tongue. It was personal. If this had been a few years earlier, I
probably would’ve thrown up. But I guess living at the motel had hardened me
somewhat. I’d seen people murdered, so a shriveled tongue wasn’t anything to be
upset about.

     
But my wallet?
She’d defied a direct order from
Grizz
. Why?

     
We guessed she’d
saved it for me. Her life and identity had been taken from her. Maybe she didn’t
have the heart to destroy my identity like
Grizz
had commanded
her to do that night.

     
“Thank you, Moe,”
I whispered.

     
I took the wallet
and put it in my back pocket. I knew without asking that Grunt would never
tell.

     
When I got back
to number four I found the bag I was carrying the night Monster abducted me. I
no longer used it. It was wadded up in a corner shelf in my closet. I put my
wallet inside and forgot about it.

     
Later that night,
Chowder and Blue carefully wrapped Moe in her bedspread and carried her out to
the bed of Blue’s pickup truck. I rode in front with Blue and
Grizz
, and Grunt rode in the back with Chowder, Moe and the
shovels.

     
I directed them
to the only place that seemed appropriate. It was dark out, but there was a
full moon.
Enough for me to find the shady
ficus
tree on a lonely rural road in Davie.

     
I picked a spot,
and Chowder and Grunt meticulously cut and rolled up the grass. Then they
started digging. I told them to make sure it was deep. I didn’t want any chance
of animals getting to her.
Grizz
gently handed her
over the low fence to Blue, who carried her to the edge of the freshly dug grave.
Before they lowered her in, I reached in under the bedspread and placed the plastic
food container with her.

     
After they filled
in the grave, they put the sod back. It barely looked like the ground had been
disturbed. I was certain nobody would notice.

     
As we drove away
I had to look back. He was there, and he was magnificent—Moe’s beautiful,
brown horse. He was standing next to her grave.

     
Years later, as I
was being interrogated by the police about my knowledge of the people who’d
lived at the motel, I could never bring myself to give up Moe’s final resting
place. I was able to tell them honestly how she died. Her family would at least
have that closure. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell them she was actually
buried on their property. I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t dig her up and move
her to a cemetery, give her a proper burial. I knew in my heart this was the
only burial Moe would want.

     
Grunt stopped at
Fess’s on his way back home and told him what happened. Sarah Jo later told me
her father cried like a baby that night. He was upset he didn’t get to say
goodbye, but he also understood the less fuss, the better for everyone. He
asked if he could pay his respects.
Grizz
wouldn’t
tell him where she was buried, but I think Grunt may have.

     
I would drive by
that
ficus
tree many times over the coming years just
to say hello to my old friend Moe. The area was still undeveloped and there was
never anyone around. But on a few occasions, I saw dried, dead flowers at the
foot of the
ficus
tree. I was pretty sure Fess had
been there.

     
Subconsciously, I
blamed
Grizz
for Moe’s death. Heck, I might even have
blamed myself. I struggled with my life as it now was. What right did I have to
have a happy life when Moe was dead and would never have one?

     
I started to
question my beliefs. Who was I? I reminded myself that I’d witnessed murders.
Then I struggled with why I even had to remind myself. Wasn’t a murder tragic?
How could I not think about it every single day?

     
And perhaps worse,
I was in love with a hardened criminal. At that point, I think I was starting
to wake up from the illusion of my seemingly perfect life with
Grizz
. How could I convince myself our lifestyle was okay?
Who had I let myself become? Did I see a future with him? Was I going to have
his children?

     
I sunk deeper
into depression, and it only got worse that summer when
Grizz
finally found the guy who attacked me.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I can
honestly say I never stopped loving
Grizz
, but after
what he did to the man who attacked me, I became afraid of him like never
before. Not of what he would do to me—I knew deep down
Grizz
would never hurt me. But I was very afraid of what
Grizz
was capable of doing to others.

     
It turned out it
was very much a personal attack. The guy’s name was Darryl Hines. He was in
love with a blonde hooker in Miami.

     
A blonde hooker
named Willow.

     
Darryl Hines had
heard so much from Willow about how
Grizz
had cast
her out of the gang years earlier because of me. So he decided to do something
about it. Darryl was crazy about Willow and wanted to show his love for her.

     
It was by pure
coincidence that he picked a night to come to the motel when I was most
vulnerable. He was high on drugs and wasn’t even sure if I would be in the room
when he burst in. He had to know that if he came in and
Grizz
was there, he would have met certain death. But that night he was so high he just
didn’t care. He took a chance and it paid off for him.

     
Well, it wasn’t
paying off now.

     
I believed Darryl
Hines needed to pay for what he did to me. But I will never be able to accept
how
Grizz
dealt with him.

     
The day they
brought him to the motel, I identified his voice immediately. It was a voice
I’d never forget. I stayed in number four while
Grizz
marched him out to the pit. Chowder told me how he was kneeling in the pit and
crying. He confessed to everything. He was more upset that Willow had dumped
him after he told her what he did. She had used him to take vengeance on me,
and once he accomplished that, she had no further use for him.

     
“Seems to me you
should be more worried about what I’m going to do to you,”
Grizz
told him.

     
Darryl was
sobbing. “You can’t do nothing to me that won’t hurt more than what Willow did.”

     
“We’ll see about
that.”

     
It was July in South
Florida. It was unbearably hot. That night,
Grizz
drove me over to Naples on the west coast. He set me up in an expensive hotel
on the beach. He told me he was going to be dealing with Darryl and he didn’t
want me around. He said I should relax and enjoy myself, not to worry. Like
that was going to happen. He left me with a lot of cash and he returned to the
motel.

     
Chicky
showed up after two days and spent a day with me. I’d
never really let myself get to know
Chicky
, and it
was nice talking to her. We spent the day at an isolated spot on the beach. She
told me about herself.

     
Chicky
was forty-six years old. I was shocked. I thought
she was much younger. Most of the women looked hardened and old from the drugs
and the gang life. Not her. She told me she’d been with the gang for only a
couple of years before I came along.

     
“Yes,” she
answered without me having to ask. “I was in love with
Grizz
,
too. Who wasn’t?”

     
Then she laughed
and waved it off like it was nothing. She told me she had been waiting tables
at a local bar popular for its hot wings.
Grizz
had approached
her and asked her to work for him. She said she’d been a stripper in her
younger years, so bartending topless wasn’t a stretch, and the money was great.
Besides, she had a daughter to feed and put through school.

     
That shocked me.
Her daughter was a senior in college.
Chicky
knew she
surprised me.

     
“Just because I’ve
lived hard and haven’t always made the right
decisions doesn’t
mean I don’t want better for my girl.”

     
I wiggled my toes
in the sand. “How do you handle it,
Chicky
? How do
you handle the awful stuff you’ve seen at the motel and other places?”

     
“Just do. As far
as I can tell, I
ain’t
done
nothing bad to nobody. Unless loving somebody is a bad thing.”

     
I looked over at
her. Before I could voice it, she said, “No, not
Grizz
,
honey. I stay around hoping Fess might take notice of me one day. I know he had
eyes for Moe, but I think I could be real good with Fess.”

     
I smiled. “Yes, I
think you could too,
Chicky
.” We both lay back in our
beach chairs and closed our eyes.

     
After a minute,
she said, “He really is in love with you, you know?
Grizz
.
I’ve seen him with all kinds of women.” She stopped then and said, “Sorry, don’t
mean it like that. Just that he could pretty much have any woman he wanted and
he did, until you came along. I
ain’t
never seen nothing like it. A lot of the men put their women to work, share ’
em
with other guys. It’s a normal thing. But not where you’re
concerned.”

     
I leaned up on my
elbows and looked over at her. “
Chicky
, I love
Grizz
with all my heart. I really do. But you know, I don’t
go to all the biker rallies and different meetings with him. He could be with
anyone and I’d never know.”

     
“Yeah, except he
isn’t.” She sat up and looked at me. “I’ve been to some of those rallies. Those
meetings. I’ve seen women take their clothes off and stick their stuff in his
face. He just pushes ’
em
away.”

     
“Really?” I was
surprised. It was something I’d not let myself think too much about.

     
But now that I let
myself think about it, I avoided the pit as often as possible for a few key
reasons, one being the dirty
looks
I got from the
other women. They were never mean or disrespectful to me.
Grizz
wouldn’t have allowed it. But I caught the occasional nasty glance. Was that
because
Grizz
was loyal to me? I was a little
shocked.

     
Then I remembered
the night I caught him with Willow.

     
The words tumbled
out before I could stop them. “I was pretty sure after I walked in on him and
Willow that time that he did as he pleased, regardless of me.”

     
“Oh, I remember
that night,”
Chicky
sighed. “You went to Grunt’s room
to listen to records. Yep. I remember it well. He did it on purpose to make you
jealous.”

     
This got my
attention. “How could he have done it on purpose? The timing had to be exactly right
for me to catch him.”

     
“He just gave
Grunt the signal that he wanted to know a few minutes before you were leaving
his room.”

     
“What?” I sat
straight up in my beach chair.

     
“It’s a signal
system they set up.”
Chicky
sat up, too, waved her
hand absently. “I’m surprised you don’t know about it. They’d been using it
awhile. Now that I think on it, haven’t seen him do it since then, but it was a
regular thing.”

     
“What kind of
system? For what purpose?”

     
“A while back,
when someone would come to the motel that wasn’t familiar or known to be
trusted, they’d be taken into one of the rooms and shown some hospitality, if
you know what I mean. This would give the gang a chance to check them out. Go
through their car or saddlebags if they were riding. Whoever was inside knew to
flick the outside light twice to signal that the person was going to leave in a
minute or two. That’s what Grunt did right before you left. Flicked his porch
light. You should’ve seen
Grizz
drag Willow like a
bat out of hell to your room.”

     
“Grunt was in on
it?”

     
“Nah, he just saw
Grizz
give him the signal that, for whatever reason,
meant
Grizz
wanted to know when you were
gonna
be leaving Grunt’s room. The kid didn’t know why.”

     
I laughed. I
laughed hard.
Grizz
had been trying to make me
jealous? Well, now that I think about it, it worked. As a matter of fact, if I’d
peeked through the crack between the curtain and the window of number four
instead of running back to Grunt’s room, I bet I would have seen
Grizz
shove Willow away from him, pull up his pants and
tell her to get her ass out of his room.

     
All with a big, gigantic smile on his face.

     
I lay back on my
beach chair. “Thanks,
Chicky
. Thanks for telling me.”

     
A day or so after
Chicky
left,
I was visited by
Anthony Bear and his woman, Christy
. Anthony was a friend of
Grizz’s
. He was the equivalent of
Grizz
,
the leader of his own motorcycle gang, but on the Florida west coast.

     
I remember the
first night I’d met Anthony. It was a year or two earlier, on one of our church
trips to the west coast. We’d made a stop before getting on Alligator Alley to
go home. I’m sure my mouth hung open as I gaped at one of the most handsome men
I’d ever laid eyes on.
Grizz
was big and definitely
handsome, in a rugged way. But where
Grizz
had light
eyes and hair, Anthony was dark. He was a Native American and had chiseled,
exotic good looks. He was living proof of that old saying—tall, dark and
handsome. Black eyes, black hair and, on at least one occasion that I’d
witnessed, black mood. He was bigger than
Grizz
, at
least six foot six, muscular and tattooed. And he wore a single braid down his
back that reached his waist.

     
Christy was a
short, tanned, natural blonde with chin-length straight hair and big blue eyes.
She wasn’t little, but had a traditional hourglass figure, filled out in all the
right places. She’d been abducted, like me. I hadn’t met her until more
recently, and when I did meet her she made it obvious she wasn’t happy with her
situation. She’d even tried to convince me to help her escape.

     
The three of us
spent a nice day together, relaxing on the beach. It was now the end of the day
and we were back in my hotel room. Christy was using the bathroom.

     
“I’m sorry I
haven’t let her come see you on her own. Things are still a little unsettled. I
guess I’m still not completely comfortable letting her out of my sight,” Anthony
said quietly.

     
“You don’t need
to apologize. I understand. I remember how it was for
me and
Grizz
in the beginning. I’m just glad I got to see
you both today,” I answered.

     
“You’re happy
with him? You don’t ever want to leave him?” he asked.

     
“I love
Grizz
. I don’t love what he does. I’d be lying if I didn’t
tell you that I fantasize about a future with him away from this lifestyle.”

     
He looked at the
ground. “I’d give it up for her. I’ve tried to tell her that. I don’t know if
she believes me.”

     
Wow, I thought to
myself. This was an admission I didn’t expect, especially from Anthony. If I
was going to be honest, I think I may have been a little jealous of his last
statement.

     
“Has she tried to
leave recently?”

     
“No, not for a
few months. I don’t know if it’s because she’s finally happy with me or if
she’s waiting for me to let my guard down.”

     
I reflected back
on the last several hours. If Christy was planning to escape from Anthony, it
wasn’t obvious to me. She came out of the bathroom just then and caught me in a
hug that lasted longer than I expected. She didn’t say goodbye. She just looked
up at Anthony, and he took her by the hand and led her out of the hotel room
door. I shut it quietly behind them. I was sad to see them leave.

     
I walked over to
my balcony and looked down at the beach. It wasn’t long before I noticed
movement to my left and realized Anthony’s motorcycle was parked up on the
small sidewalk. Before getting on, Anthony turned around to face Christy. He
took her face in his hands and bent over to gently kiss her on the lips. It was
a tender moment, and I almost felt guilty for witnessing it.

     
She’ll be fine.
And I went back inside
and closed the balcony door behind me.