Groms

Chapter Six

It was the first day of November and the Monday before the surfing championship was due to begin that Friday. Charlie was following the weather reports that were heralding a tropical depression forming in the southern Caribbean Sea near Barbados.

A storm like that might take days to form and then just as quickly it would vanish. Or it could push north, gather speed in the warm waters and become a larger storm, perhaps even a hurricane. It was too soon to tell which way it would travel but he just hoped it wouldn't come anywhere near Sebastian.

Several other things stayed in Charlie's mind as he crossed the street towards the boatyard. He had been surfing with the boys for the past three weekends and watched how hard they worked on their technique. For some reason Neil had been showing flashes of brilliance that bordered on pure crazy. Something was inspiring the boy, and then Charlie met Keith.

Quiet and unassuming, Keith spent a lot of time watching the surfers through the lens of a camera. But Neil and Lucas had also given the boy some basic instruction on surfing and the kid showed promise, or he would if he could ever stand on a board without falling off.

The attachment between Neil and Keith was fairly obvious, at least to Charlie's eyes. If Neil was in some kind of relationship it didn't seem to affect his friendship with Lucas. But the closer they got to the contest the larger the crowd of observers and the beach began to look like a middle school pep rally on Saturday afternoons.

Signs of the competition were already beginning to take shape. By the end of the week there would be tents and vendor booths dotting the sand, and on Friday the food trucks would line up in the parking lot. Charlie enjoyed the circus atmosphere, but he would enjoy winning that trophy even more.

The event was regional and so there would be surfers from all over the area from as far away as Orlando and Tampa. Charlie had met some really good surfers who came to try out the waters around Sebastian Inlet, but the ones with national ranking would not compete this coming weekend. Thank goodness for that, Charlie thought.

The boatyard was fairly quiet when Charlie walked through the gates and there was no sign of Clay's truck outside the office. But Marco was in the garage bay tossing scraps into a trash barrel and singing some Spanish love song like he was very happy.

"Hey, Charlie…we did it," Marco yelled.

"Did what?"

"Didn't you see the news this morning?"

"I looked at the weather report…what's up?"

Marco tossed him the front section of the Sebastian Sun, and there on the front page was the story of the large drug bust down in Vero Beach. Details were sparse since the investigators were only releasing a small amount of information…but Charlie didn't see the name Peterson in the article.

"Doesn't say Peterson was involved," Charlie said.

"Who else could it be?" Marcos asked. "Your buddy Giddings would know who was involved."

"He would, but he won't tell me. We'll have to wait and find out when everyone else does."

"I just know it's them," Marco said, "and we planted that GPS unit."

Four Cubans had been arrested and others were being sought the article said. The Acosta name wasn't mentioned but maybe the cops weren't releasing everything. It was hard to imagine that both Peterson and Acosta as the ringleaders could have walked away.

Two hundred kilos of cocaine were seized, over four hundred pounds. Considering the damage to the boat Charlie had fixed this didn't seem like enough of a load to break a torque tube. Maybe they didn't tow anything this time but four hundred pounds was a bulky load in a boat that size.

Clay rolled in and behind him was that familiar unmarked car. Detective Giddings gave Charlie a wave and then followed Clay into the office.

"Wonder what he's doing here?" Marco said.

"I guess we'll find out soon enough," Charlie replied.

A few minutes later Giddings and Clay walked into the garage.

"I suppose you read the paper," Giddings said. "Both Peterson and his son have disappeared along with Acosta and a few of his boys. Peterson's yacht is missing from the Vero Beach marina so they must be out there somewhere, but the Coast Guard is looking for them. I know you're not directly involved but I want you to be careful…something warned them off."

"I didn't tell anyone," Charlie said. "No, but my little brother heard Marco and I talking about the GPS…but who would he tell?"

"Someone in the department could have tipped them off," Giddings said. "Just keep your eyes open. Only one good thing about all this…you won't have Steven Peterson in the competition this weekend."

Charlie nodded. "Too bad, I would have beaten him fair and square. So, I guess you tracked that Sunscape to make the bust."

"I'm happy to say the GPS unit worked perfectly…and that's why I'm here. The State Drug Enforcement Bureau has a program that rewards people for assisting in drug busts. Clay thinks we should nominate you and Marco for a payout."

"Us? Clay ought to get the reward," Charlie said.

Clay shook his head. "Nope, you and Marco did the work. Don't you want ten thousand dollars?"

Marco whistled. "That's a lot of money."

Giddings smiled. "Well, you don't have it yet. The payout comes after the drug dealers are convicted…we have to catch them first."

"Then I wish you good luck, Detective," Marco said.

The rest of the morning was consumed with winterizing boats and talking about what they could do with the reward money. Marco's imaginary spending spree got wilder and wilder and Charlie laughed it off. He would give his portion of the money to his mom, and they could start a college fund for Lucas.

The death of his little brother had pushed Charlie over the edge. He dragged his way out of high school with no thought for a college degree. But Clay had set him on track with the apprentice mechanic's program…and here he was.

Marco had been a certified mechanic for a decade, made money good enough to get married and buy a house. This was Florida where there would always be a need for mechanics. When Charlie turned twenty-one he would go for his master's license and Clay had already promised him more money.

But Lucas needed a college degree. It was too soon to tell what the boy was capable of accomplishing but Charlie would make sure he got there when the time came. Charlie blew out the bilges of a twenty foot Whaler and changed the oil in the engine.

Giddings was pretty sure that Peterson had been given a warning of some kind. Would Lucas have told Neil and if he did would they talk to Carlos about it? Carlos was the weak link because of his father's involvement. But the boy and his mother had moved away from the drugs…what a mess.

Around three o'clock Lucas and Neil walked through the gate to start shrink wrapping several boats, but first they ran into Charlie and Marco closing up the hatches on the Whaler.

"Lucas, who did you tell about the GPS Marco and I put on Peterson's boat?"
"The GPS? Oh yeah, I asked Neil how those things worked."

"Did Carlos hear you guys talking? I'm sure you guys heard about the big drug bust down in Vero. Carlos' father was involved in that."

"Oh shit," Neil said. "Carlos wasn't in school today and Mr. Beale said he called Mrs. Acosta but nobody answered the phone. You think something happened to Carlos?"

"I don't think anything because the cops are all over this and we need to stay out of it," Charlie said. "What did you tell Carlos?"

"Not much, just that the cops were curious about Peterson. Did I do the wrong thing?"

"I don't know but I ought to tell the detective about Carlos," Charlie said. "You guys go over to the house and I'll be home soon. I want to clean my board before it gets dark."

Giddings didn't seem surprised when Charlie called. "Yeah, we figured Acosta is the one who warned Peterson off. It was two of his landscaping guys that were busted in Peterson's boat with the GPS and all those drugs. As I said, you and Marco should be careful. We still don't have them rounded up."

"I don't want to get involved," Charlie said.

"We have the wife's house under surveillance but there has been no sign of life there so far. Acosta won't have been able to go far…"

"The church…have you looked at her church?" Charlie said.

"What church?" Giddings asked.

"She's a Santeria priestess and they have their own church…"

"On Lockmead Road, I know the place," Giddings said. "We better check it out."

Charlie hung up and went back to Marcos. "Giddings said to be careful, the drug gang is still on the loose."

Marco looked at the shotgun leaning against the wall by the garage door. "We got protection here…you got anything at home?"

"No guns, my mother is against them…and with kids in the house, no way."

"Probably won't need any…" And then Marco looked across the boatyard towards the front gate. "Isn't that Acosta's truck?"

Charlie followed his gaze and saw the stake body truck out on the street by the gate. The first thing he noticed was that the name of the landscaping company was covered by a large white patch that didn't match the finish of the vehicle, and then he saw the two men inside.

"The boys are home alone…I don't like this," Charlie said. "Call the cops."

Marco dialed 9-1-1 as Charlie made his way through the trailers and boats towards the gate. He was just rounding the end of the Whaler he had worked on that morning when the first shot rang out. The bullet smacked into the stern of the boat and Charlie dropped to the ground and crawled under the boat as the second bullet hit the fiberglass panel over his head.

Shit, Charlie thought, and then there was the solid boom of Marco's shotgun. Charlie looked up and saw that the windshield of the truck had been destroyed. A second boom and the hood of the truck popped open as Marco disabled the engine.

Charlie smiled as two sheriff's cars slid in from up the street and the deputies drew their weapons on the men inside the truck. Marco came running over to Charlie and looked him over.

"You hurt, compadre?"

"No…but what do you have loaded in that shotgun?"

"Oh, my shark killing loads. Steel balls in the first shell followed by a slug in the second, did some damage to that truck, eh?"

"The guys inside aren't moving," Charlie said.

But the deputies forced the men out of the cab and onto the ground. The exploding windshield left them bloodied and covered in glass. More sheriffs' men showed up and Marco set the shotgun on the ground.

Giddings arrived about fifteen minutes later after Charlie explained to the uniforms about Acosta. He could see Lucas and Neil standing outside the chain link fencing with about half the neighborhood and he waved to show his brother that everything was all right. Clay was looking at the damage to the boat as several ambulances pulled into the yard.

"Some party," Marco said with a grin.

"Not funny, look at the damage to this boat," Clay said.

Marco looked at the Whaler and decided that the bullets had not hit anything vital inside, but even though the holes could be patched it would take a lot of work to refinish the outside. Giddings joined them and looked Charlie over.

"You aren't bulletproof so they must have been lousy shots….thank goodness for that."

"I think Marco spoiled their aim," Charlie said. "So did you check out the church?"

Giddings nodded. "I have the SWAT team over there…but I'm not supposed to tell you things like that."

"So who pays for the damage to the boat?" Clay asked.

"I'm sure you have insurance," Giddings said. "I wouldn't expect to get any payoff from those two idiots in the truck. I’ll talk to your insurance agent if necessary. You better close the yard until the crime scene investigators get here."

Charlie finally took Lucas and Neil back to the house, but only after the cops had made then tell the story a half dozen times. Their mother wasn't home and rather than expose Neil to any further danger on the street Charlie loaded the boys in his car and drove Neil home.

"You should deep clean your board tonight," Charlie told Neil. "Lucas and I are going to do ours and we can re-wax all three at the same time."

"Why did those guys shoot at you?" Neil asked.

"I don't know…maybe it was revenge."

"What about Carlos?" Lucas asked.

"Don't know yet," Charlie replied…but several hours later he found out.

The SWAT team had blocked off the streets around the church. The building was a low cinder block structure with little adornment on the outside and only a few windows. Uniformed deputies cleared the residents of several houses next to the church and set up a perimeter while the SWAT team moved into position.

Giddings and two other detectives remained near the SWAT command truck a short way up the street. Through the open door on the side Giddings could see the television monitors and the images being broadcast by the spotters near the church.

The building had double doors in front and only a single exit door at the back, but someone had set up a surveillance camera looking in one of the windows. Unlike many churches, this one did not have pews set up in rows for the congregation to gather, just a scattering of folding chairs.

But the image showed several people standing in front of an altar, and one of them was Carlo's mother. There was no sound but the actions inside said a lot about the passions of the people involved. Giddings counted three men, a boy and the woman who seemed to be arguing with one of the men who was pointing a pistol at her.

"That's her husband," Giddings told the commander.
"You want us to take him out?"

"No…not in front of his son. There has to be a better way."

The commander was hesitant to send his men crashing into the building until he figured out if the woman and boy were hostages, but that pistol seemed to indicate that they were. The rules of engagement always dictated the safety of hostages came first so they would wait until the dynamics of the scene changed…and it quickly did.

Mr. Acosta pushed his wife out of the way and made for the altar, but she wasn't going to permit that. She threw herself at her husband and at the last second snatched a knife off the corner of the altar. Giddings looked on in horror as she stabbed the man and watched the pistol discharge.

The woman went down and Acosta stumbled…that's when the boy rushed into the image and in one swift move he kicked his father between the legs. Things happened real fast after that and Giddings left the truck and ran towards the church. The second he was kicked Acosta went down and dropped the pistol, that was when the SWAT commander yelled "Go" into his headset.

The team burst through the doors and the two members of Acosta's gang raised their arms in surrender. Giddings arrived to see Carlos bent over his mother screaming in anguish. She had been shot in the leg and even as Giddings approached he could hear the ambulance crew pulling up outside.

The SWAT deputies made short work of the two thugs, pushing them to the floor and applying handcuffs. Acosta had a knife wound in his side but he was still cuffed as a paramedic leaned over to assess the damage. Mrs. Acosta was the focus of most of the medical attention and Giddings heard one of the medics say she would live even as they covered the wound with a bandage to stem the bleeding.

In all of this craziness Carlos stood and watched with tears flowing down his cheeks. Giddings decided that the boy had seen enough as they loaded his mother and father in separate ambulances and headed for the hospital.

"Carlos….I'm Detective Giddings. Come on…let me give you a ride to the hospital so we can check on your mother."

The church was now a crime scene and as Giddings led Carlos out to his car they saw the yellow tape going up and the crime scene investigators arrive in their van. It would be a long night of interviews and paperwork, but first they had to figure out what to do with Carlos.

At some point during the drive to the Sebastian River Medical Center Carlos stopped crying and began to curse his father. Giddings knew better than to question the boy without an adult advocate present, but it seems Carlos was angry enough to start talking.

"That bastard…he tried to kill me and my mother."
"The medics said she will be all right…why don't you wait until we see her before you tell me what happened."

"You must be that detective friend of Charlie's," Carlos said.

"I am. Look, your mother might be in the hospital for a while…do you have other family members here in town?"

"No…my grandmother went back to Havana last week. Oh…what's going to happen to me and my sister?"

"Nothing bad, I assure you. We'll have to call the Department of Children and Families since you kids can't stay at home by yourselves."

"My little sister is there with Mrs. Juarez…she took over when Grandma went home but she's only supposed to cover for mom while she's at work. Can't we just stay with her?"

"Any other family in Florida?" Giddings asked.

"We have cousins in Miami…but I have school here," Carlos said.

"We'll have to let DCF sort this out but I'll make sure you get a good deal."

Charlie had come home after several hours of dealing with cops and discovered he was too tired to work on his surfboard. His mother walked in the house from work expecting dinner to be ready and not a thing had been done. They called for a pizza delivery while Charlie sat down to explain what had happened that afternoon.

They had just finished eating when the doorbell rang. "I'll get it," Lucas said.

Giddings followed Lucas back to the kitchen where Charlie offered him a coffee and a seat at the table.

"What brings you here?" Charlie asked as Lucas and Mrs. Travers joined them.

"You were right, they were at the church," Giddings began and he told them of the incidents surrounding the capture of the drug gang.

"So I'm here because of Carlos," he said. "The boy has had enough trauma in the past six hours to last a lifetime. Mrs. Acosta has a neighbor named Juarez who is only too glad to take care of Carlo's little sister but the boy is our problem. DCF wants to place him in a foster home until his mother is out of the hospital."

"That could take weeks," Mrs. Travers said. "Gunshot wounds can have all kinds of side effects."

"At least four weeks the doctor tells me and Carlos threw a fit. I came to ask for your help…"

"We can take him," Lucas said. "Please, Mom…he can sleep in my room."

Giddings looked at Lucas and smiled. "I know he's your friend…"

"We'll take him," Charlie said. "Mom is a registered nurse and we have the room. What do we have to do?"

"I call Sharon, you have some paperwork to do and DCF will pay you for his upkeep. Carlos was admitted to the hospital for the night just so he could be close to his mother. As I said he threw a fit…this is one angry boy."

"It's probably good that you have his father in custody," Charlie said. "So Carlos kicked him in the balls?"

Giddings nodded. "It was like watching a field goal attempt."

Lucas' mother called her supervisor at work and said she would be in, but not to put her on the schedule because she had to be elsewhere in the hospital. Then she called Mr. Beale at school to say Lucas would be out for the day. They all piled in Charlie's car and were at the Medical center by eight-thirty.

Sharon Parks from DCF met them in the lobby and seemed pleased to see the solution to her latest problem. Carlos' situation was only temporary and placing him with a foster family of strangers for however long it took for the mother to heal seemed absurd.

Detective Giddings had suggested the Travers family as an option and so far it seemed he was right. The youngest Travers boy was in school with Carlos and it would be important for him to maintain his education and begin to see his life as somewhat normal.

"Sharon Parks," she said, introducing herself to Mrs. Travers.

"Dorothy Travers and these are my sons Charlie and Lucas. So what do we have to do to get this ball rolling?"

"Just some paperwork, and then I have to write a report for the juvenile court. These are just formalities, I assure you. Do you work here?"

"I do…pediatrics at the moment."

"Excellent," Sharon said.

It took an hour to complete the paperwork and then Sharon took them upstairs to find Carlos. He was outside his mother's room at the ICU and the moment they walked in the room Sharon knew she had made the right choice.

"Lucas," Carlos said and embraced his friend. The hug eased the tension and Sharon allowed the boys to talk before looking through the glass window at Mrs. Acosta. Dorothy made her way over to the nurse's station and pulled the patient chart.

Gunshot wound, the bullet going through the muscle of the right thigh and scoring the femur several inches below the pelvis before exiting the leg. A painful wound that had been cleaned and packed the night before in the emergency room. Now it would take time to heal as Mrs. Acosta went through a course of antibiotic treatment.

"What does it say?" Sharon asked. "I haven't been able to speak with Mrs. Acosta."

"She's on a high dose of pain meds for the immediate trauma…maybe you can see her tomorrow or the next day. She was very lucky there was no major damage. I'm sure they'll try to get her up and around by the end of the week, at least get her out of bed.

"After that…well, she'll need a good course of therapy as the muscles heal but it's going to be some time before she can walk again."

"That's what the doctor told us," Sharon said. "Do you have a problem keeping Carlos for several weeks?"

"Not at all, he's welcome in our home. I can check in on her every day and Charlie can bring Carlos up here after school. She needs to see her son otherwise anxiety might set in at the dissolution of her family. The husband will be out of the picture for a long, long time, and that's a good thing."

"I agree…Carlos wants to kill him," Sharon said.

Dorothy nodded. "Can you blame him?"

"No, not at the moment, but I think the boy will need counseling."

"He will, and I will keep an eye on him as well."

They watched Carlos leaning on the windowsill looking in at his sleeping mother, and then Charlie approached.

"He's coming home with us," Dorothy told her son.

"Good."

Carlos turned to Charlie with a frown on his face. "I'm sorry…this is my fault."
"Your fault…how do you figure that?" Charlie asked.

"I told him about you, Peterson and the boatyard. He forced me to tell him how the cops knew about the drugs…he would have killed my mom."

"I believe that," Charlie said. "You did it to protect her."

"I'll never see him again, will I?"

Charlie slid his arm around Carlo's shoulder. "I hope you don't. He's not a very good father."

"The detective said he would be gone to prison for a long, long time. He told me I would be a man before my father gets out…why did he say that?"

Charlie smiled. "I think he was telling you that people change as they grow up. I know I hated my father for years because he was foolish and got my brother killed. I haven't forgiven him for that and maybe I never will, but I find it easier to think about now."

"You think I’ll forgive my father?" Carlos asked.

"No, perhaps not. But you have a life to live with your family and he's no longer a part of that. You don't have to forgive your father but he's the one who has to live with that loss not you."

Carlos nodded and looked back at his mother in the ICU bed with tubes running out of her arms. "I can't forgive him for this…she deserves better. I guess I'm the man in the house now."

"That's a big responsibility so I guess I'll have to help you," Charlie said.

"Thank you, Charlie."

"You're welcome."

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