Finding Bluto

Woodrow and I made good roommates. We both had an appreciation for the simple things: a cold beer, an edible meal, semi-intelligent conversation, a cold beer, a good book, a horny woman, cold beer, good smoke and of course a cold beer. We also both had recently regained our freedom after years of tortuous incarceration. Woodrow was just released from federal prison after serving five years for his part in a failed attempt to import one hundred thirty five thousand pounds of marijuana and I was granted a divorce from my first wife. These were happier times, and gave us due cause for celebration. We shared a one room apartment in a triplex on North Redington Beach whose walls were so thin I blew my nose one morning and they raised the Park Boulevard drawbridge. North Redington Beach was an elitist beach community where the million dollar homes were no match for condo-mania and all the quaint motels on the beachfront were torn down to makes way for the condo-dwellers who never quite came. Of course there was our half block slum-like turf that served only to keep the bar across the street in business. It is here Woodrow and I met we most of our neighbors. The two other apartments in our complex were rented out by a couple of the more colorful characters on the beach. Apartment two was occupied by Sandy, a sixty-something year-old alcoholic who spoke with a Scottish brogue. She was born in Wisconsin, was of German descent and had never set foot in Scotland but that had absolutely no effect on her brogue. Apartment three was rented by Old Bill, a retired Navy Chief, who hated wearing his false teeth. He always had a pipe sticking out of the corner of his mouth and he couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. He had sailed all over the world, his thin saggy skin stained by indistinguishable tattoos. He told tales of exotic people, doing exotic things, in exotic places; and we decided some of them were probably true.There was a picture behind the bar of Old Bill as a sailor taken in 1951. He was bigger then, muscular, had the pipe in his mouth, a sailor cap on his head and looked exactly like Popeye the Sailor. You wouldn’t have recognized him if you didn’t know his eyes. He had that-I know shit that would kill a lesser man-amused squint seen only on old sailors, Martial Arts Masters and Catholic priests. You could tell he didn't like being old. He had little patience or tolerance for the know-it-all tourists and big mouth drunks. He wouldn’t argue or raise his voice he’d simply snarl a few curmudgeons’ riffs and mumble his way back home. We all knew he was very sick though we didn’t know what was wrong with him. He never let anyone drive him to the VA but he’d take the bus more and more frequently as time went on. He was a tough old man and just wanted to enjoy a beer and a good laugh with his friends. Woodrow and I were glad to be amongst them.

Woodrow and I went fishing offshore whenever we could. We could make a few hundred dollars in a day or two and even more if a card game broke out. One morning, after a two-day overnighter on a friend’s commercial boat, we returned home and decided to throw a fish-fry for our neighbors. As Woodrow and I carried the cooler from Rusty, his beater pick-up, a primordial rush slapped us and we froze in mid-stride--a gasp-- slow exhale--we lowered the cooler-- I turned to face Woody and we locked eyes knowing something bad had happened. We knew what it was too. Shaking my head I asked anyway; "Damn Woodrow, what's that smell?”

There is a difference between being questioned by police as a witness, from that of being questioned as a suspect, especially when they are investigating a murder.

To be continued--