“There’s a parking lot just around the corner,” she said. “Lots of cars there. You can park there and nobody will see.”
“I meant what I said about partying,” he offered, as he started to drive away. “I got a few dawgs comin’ over, ’bout six or seven. Could be twenty a pop for a hot little mamacita like you. And all the rock candy you can smoke.”
Over a hundred dollars, she thought.
Carmel slid closer and rubbed his crotch. “I like parties.”
Tavarius, known among his Lake Boyz brothers as “Bumpy,” smiled at how easy it’d been. Other gang members were busy picking up more hookers who worked the MS-13 controlled part of south Fort Myers.
He drove north, headed back to Lake Boyz turf. He took his time, letting her work magic on him with her mouth, knowing that once they got to the clubhouse, she and the others who were being rounded up would be used as sex toys and eventually killed.
MS-13 was new to Fort Myers, and though they had a reputation in bigger cities, they were still small-time on the southwest coast. Lake Boyz had been around for as long as Bumpy could remember.
It was time to put MS-13 in its place in Fort Misery and that started with eliminating one of their sources of income.
The rhythmic sound of my running feet on the pavement had lulled me into an alternative state after the first mile—the runner’s high. The first mile is always easy and quickly brings on an almost euphoric state.
It was the second mile that always made me think, why not just go for a swim? As a means of keeping fit, swimming was by far a better total body work out. And it was a lot easier on the joints.
It’s not that I couldn’t run—I just chose not to. At six-three, my long legs could eat up miles effortlessly.
My elongated shadow stretched thirty feet in front of me and the morning sun was warm on my back. Each step was in harmony with the cadence I always heard in my head when I ran.
I used to run a lot. Back when I was an active-duty Marine, our morning PT always consisted of at least a three-mile run, usually more. Rain or shine, hot or cold, that’s how we started our day in the infantry. And it usually wasn’t on nice, flat concrete with running shoes. We ran the same way we trained to fight; in boots and utes, running through the woods or on a sandy beach.
The sing-song cadences we used while running in formation were often colorful, to say the least. They were downright profane on other occasions—not meant for politically correct ears. But Marines are Marines. The ditties, as we called them, were used to keep the troops in step and motivated, but they served a purpose beyond that. Singing while running also helped to regulate breathing, as the platoon or squad would sing the song back to the leader.
My particular favorite, learned while I was in boot camp, told the mythical story of the Corps, as if it were one person. It could be sung in a quick-time march or a double-time run.
He was born on Parris Island,
The land that God forgot,
Where the sand was fourteen inches deep,
And the sun was blazing hot.
But that was just a one-mile cadence and I’d already chanted it twice in my head, including the sing-back.
I knew many others, and as I searched my memory for another favorite, the voice in my head—that of my boot camp senior drill instructor, Staff Sergeant O’Lowny—defaulted back to the minimalistic Lo-right-a-lo-right-a-LO-right-a-layo.
“What are you thinking about?” Savannah asked, running steadily right beside me. This morning’s seven-mile run was her idea.
“I’m trying not to think,” I replied. “It makes it hard to keep from running into people.”
She laughed. “It’s thinning out a little. I swear I got bumped a dozen times there at the start.”
We were running on the world-famous Seven Mile Bridge, currently closed to vehicular traffic on a beautiful Saturday in the middle of April.
Savannah had signed us both up for the 40th Annual Seven Mile Bridge Run. The race was held by a local running club every year. It started on Knight’s Key, at one end of the longest of forty-three bridges on the Overseas Highway, and it ended on Little Duck Key at the other end. There would be a grueling half-mile stretch before the midpoint of the race, as the bridge rose from twenty feet above the water to nearly seventy. A fifty-foot climb doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the equivalent of running up to the fifth floor of a building. Except it’s stretched over a much longer distance than five flights of stairs. The high arch over Moser Channel would reduce a lot of the runners to walkers.
There were at least a hundred people running ahead of us, and fifteen times that number behind us. We weren’t running to compete, but the leaders were in sight, running together in a line from one side of the bridge to the other, about two hundred yards ahead of us.
“I can tell you want to move up there and beat them,” Savannah said. “You’re so competitive.”
I looked over at her and smiled. “No way. Those guys are half my age and far more competitive than I ever was.”
“All the more reason to beat them,” she said, lengthening her stride just a little.
I grinned and matched her gait as we passed two much younger athletes.
Fifteen hundred runners participated every year, chosen randomly from perhaps 10,000 entrants. Most were from South Florida but there were always runners from countries all over the world competing in what was likely the longest footrace held entirely over water.
There were dozens of professional athletes in the mix. They’d mostly started at the front of the pack on Knights Key and would likely stay in the front throughout the race. I figured that somewhere around the highway’s forty-one-mile marker—about
