Page 49 of A Handsome Devil

Next to us, Jack Hoffman filmed everything.

“You tried to fool us,” yelled Bridgewater. “But we figured out you’re the Undisputed Truth Club. You’re not related to our client Mr. Yarborough.”

“Yes we are!” I bellowed back. “We’re all his family. And we’ve come to save him and the other seniors you’re murdering and drugging.”

Behind me, my men clapped. “Right on, right on,” urged Hunt. “Bad, bad!” agreed Denmark.

Bridgewater shouted, “You’re on the run from the law. We could call the cops on you right now and have you all hauled away.”

Alessio stepped up to the plate. “But you won’t! Because you’re guilty of way more crimes than we are. How many old folks have you murdered? Overdosed with illegal drugs, cremated in a communal grave?”

This gave Bridgewater a split-second pause, and that’s when I noticed. One by one, our fellow nudist park tenants had come forward. There was the guy with nothing but a florid lei around his neck. A lady with a giant wooden walking stick. A couple with matching plaid belts. Many people had wide-brimmed straw hats to keep the cancerous sun off their shoulders. I unfortunately noticed a couple of guys had pierced cocks or nipples. One lady wore a blowup ring around her waist, as if about to go swimming. But other than that, yeah, they were all pretty naked.

Many of the thugs seemed caught off guard, splaying their hands in the “whoa” position, backing slowly away. Bridgewater remained impervious, not even glancing at the youngish woman with bouncy tits. He didn’t seem to realize his troops were abandoning him. “What proof do you have of this? We medicate our patients with whatever the doctor orders. We certainly don’t over-medicate and I fucking resent the implications!” He pointed at Jack Hoffman, camera held high. “Your fucking spokesman has brought all kinds of unwanted and unnecessary criticism down on me and I’m never going to outlive it! Fucking newsmen, families, agencies, the entire fucking county is converging on us. We had to shut the place down an hour ago and get our own security guards!”

I jumped a foot in the air when a gravelly voice yelled from behind me. “Because you deserve it!”

Everyone—our club, nudists, tattooed corpsmen—twisted around to gaze upon Pickett Yarborough. Looking as though he’d just woken from a nap with mussed, thick white hair, he shoved aside Hunt, Thymus, Gunning and me. Brandishing the empty vial of tranq, he hollered, “This bottle was prescribed for me by you, and it’s unnecessary, deadly, and evil tranq!”

That seemed to shut everyone up. You could’ve heard a cock ring drop. Rage getting the better of him, Pickett added, “And you’re not even a fucking real doctor!”

Before we could grab him, Pickett stomped down the few steps to the dirt and gravel common area. When Bridgewater took several strides toward Pickett, that’s when all sorts of wild happened.

Pickett slipped like a Three Stooge, feet flying in the air, ass slamming on the ground. Our protective instinct kicked in, and we all poured down the stairs to lift up Pickett. That’s when I saw the banana peel he’d slipped on. The most tortuous of all fruit peels.

“Did you hit your head?” asked Thymus.

Alessio roared. Raging like Satan with a toothache, he lumbered with outstretched claws. I watched openmouthed as he headed for the nudist with the spitting cobra around his neck. Exhibiting zero fear, Alessio unwrapped the black and white serpent, stretching it out to its full length of maybe four feet. The nudist even grinned as Alessio headed straight for Bridgewater. The fake doctor must’ve been too terrified to run, although his bodyguard sure weren’t stopped from taking off. Coiling it around Bridgewater’s neck, Alessio growled,

“Die, you fucking waste of air. Die.”

But Bridgewater whipped a sort of curved knife from one of his pockets, chortling with glee as he expertly sliced the snake’s head off. He tossed the head to the ground as he cackled like a fizzy beverage, having the time of his life as he unthreaded the remainder of the snake from his neck, only a few drips of blood getting onto his white shirt.

“See? You can’t even get me! No one can! I’m completely immune to your—agh!”

Goons clung to each other as we stepped forward to see what had twisted Bridgewater’s face. Alessio and I held each other’s arms almost in a religious trance. Hunt, Thymus, Denmark, we all leaned in as even Jack Hoffman got his closeup.

Bridgewater wore Birkenstocks. From beyond the grave, the decapitated head had sunk its fangs into the arch of his foot. Cringing and cramping up his arms, Bridgewater now fell to the gravel.

“What sort of cobra is this?” Thymus asked the nudist.

He casually responded. “Why, it’s an Indochinese spitting cobra.”

Thymus swiftly googled on his phone. “Causes death within thirty minutes. Mixture of neurotoxins.”

“Yep,” said the nudist proudly.

Meanwhile what was left of the army was yelling things like “Cobra?” “Spitting?” and “Death?” Down to a man, they fled back through the gate, spreading out so no one could catch them.

Pickett hocked a loogie on Bridgewater. “Good! Serves him right! Bit by a poisonous cobra? That’s kind of tit for tat if you ask me!”

That hadn’t occurred to me, and Alessio and I smiled widely at each other. As Bridgewater had poisoned so many disabled seniors, he now wound up paralyzed on the gravel of a nudist trailer park. A fitting end for the most heinous, corrupt, and malicious person I’d ever come up against.

“Well, hey,” said Alessio. “We didn’t kill him directly.”

The nudist said, “It was an accident.”

“A good accident!” cried the guy with the lei, a hurrah that was taken up by the rest of the group. “Good death!” “Good riddance!” “Good corpse!”