A Quiet Night on the Bay

Poetic prose telling a sinister story

The pilot flew the twin engine plane in the darkness without lights, he

was ten minutes away from his landing spot at a local farm. He was

two trips away from becoming a millionaire and he was looking

forward to retirement. He was thinking about umbrella drinks and bikinis

when both engines sputtered and caught fire.

The pilot took out his cellphone and called the crew leader at the

rendezvous point. It was the last call he made as the plane crashed

into the bay.

The next night, Joey stood by the starboard rail of a stolen cabin

cruiser as Rico searched for the wreck of the plane with its bricks

of heroin and cocaine.

After a wait that seemed to take forever, the bubbles from Rico’s

scuba gear appeared by the boat. “ about damned time.” Joey

muttered, as Rico threw the plastic wrapped bricks onto the boat.

Rico had gone over the side with a net to carry the bricks to the

surface if he found them, the net was full, but he had a few more

dives to go.

The light Rico was wearing around his head blinded Joey as Rico

looked at him. “ You better pay attention, I don’t want to go to

jail tonight and I don’t want to get ate, so look out for fins and

tug on the rope if you see anything.”

Joey gave a thumbs up, as Rico went below the surface for the last

time. He watched to make sure Rico wasn’t coming back up, then

he took the cellphone from his pocket. “ Hey, he’s on his last dive,

so get ready.” Joey waited another ten minutes, then his partner surfaced

and handed him the full net.

“ That’s the last of it.” Rico said with a smile, as Joey took the gun

from his jacket and put three rounds into Rico’s face.

“ I’m rich.” Joey yelled, he laughed all the way to the dock where

Three members of a street gang and their shot-caller were waiting.

He watched as they loaded the drugs into a van, then the shot-caller

walked to the front seat and grabbed a duffel bag full of cash and

walked over to the waiting wise-guy.

“Two-hundred and Fifty thousand bucks my man, pleasure doing

business with you.” Without a word, Joey took the duffel bag and

headed to the car he had parked by the dock.

‘ I’m going to party tonight.’ Joey thought, as he unlocked his

apartment door and went inside. He walked to the sofa and threw

the duffel bag on the floor next to it, then he turned to head to the

kitchen to get a beer and some grub, but there was a man

standing there with a gun with a silencer. Joey didn’t have time to

scream, he was dead before he hit the floor.

The gang cleaned the apartment and made Joey’s body vanish in

a landfill. His Capo put a contract out on him, but the mob never

found out what happened.

The shot-caller thrived, his gang the richest in the

city, until he was shot to death years later.