Tropical Freeze by James W. Hall

and wheelbarrows out into the yard and had just peeled up the linoleum the rest of the way.
    And last night, when he brought this guy home, unconscious, all he did was lay him down on one end of it and roll him three turns, keeping the stuff tight against him. His chin was just barely out of one end, and the glue of the linoleum was sticking it all closed. Just to be safe, Ozzie had tied a length of nylon rope around the middle of the roll.
    Ozzie stepped inside the shed. The lifeguard was awake, giving Ozzie his best evil eye. A yard of duct tape was keeping his mouth shut. And the linoleum was holding just fine. The guy’s feet were a good yard up inside there, and his arms were flat against his sides. Like a corn dog, getting plump and juicy inside there.
    About the only reason Ozzie could ever remember feeling sorry he’d dropped out of school so early was that he’d missed those frog classes. The ones where you cut its leg off and stuck some electricity to it and it twitched.

10
    Gaeton Richards had crushed the palmetto bug with his chin, and now its yellow goo was running down his neck. But the roach’s head was still stuck to the edge of the rolled-up linoleum and the antennae continued to wave. Gaeton could identify.
    Truth was, he wasn’t even sure he could give his feelers a good wave at this point.
    He’d been inside this roll since just after midnight last night. It felt like early afternoon now. The dehydration was weakening him badly. He was dizzy and his throat hurt. He’d lost touch with his arms and everything below the sternum sometime early this morning.
    Gaeton wondered if the palmetto bug was having an after-death, out-of-body experience. Moving toward the bright light, a transfusion of serenity, the blue doors of heaven swinging open, all those angelic feelers waving: hello, come on up, it’s great up here, always dark, crumbs everywhere.
    Ozzie shut the door. He was a blocky guy, big teeth, black hair cut in a burr. Large bones that carried a little extra meat without making him seem fat. And there were those eyes, a foggy gray. They probably came from his low-protein diet, Budweiser and Twinkies. He looked as if it wouldn’t take a full moon to set him off. A sixty-watt bulb might do just fine.
    Ozzie stepped across the linoleum roll, bringing with him some of that crisp outside air. Ozzie said, “You’re stinking this place up.” He unwrapped the silver duct tape from Gaeton’s head and drew the white sock out of his mouth.
    Gaeton dragged in a few breaths, stretched his mouth, worked his jaw. He waited till his pulse had slowed to a jog and said, “Oswald Daniel Hardison of Quincy, Florida.”
    Ozzie jerked around as if somebody’d goosed him.
    Gaeton went on, “Worked for three months at Golden Years Retirement Home in Panama City and got eighteen months at Loxahatchee for stealing rings from old ladies there. And bills from their change purses. Ozzie, come on, man. Grandmothers’ wedding rings? Ten-dollar bills folded up to squeeze in a rubber change purse?”
    “Where’d you get this shit, you slut?”
    Gaeton took a deep breath and tried to blow the roach head off the edge of the linoleum. Didn’t faze it. The feelers still twitched, trying to locate the crack it had come in through.
    “Papa John’s going to be pissed when he finds out what you’re doing to me.”
    Ozzie put his jacket on a sawhorse. He bent and scooped up his dumbbells, began working on his biceps, right arm up, left arm down.
    “You take all this time just to think that up? Scare me with what Papa John might do, that old man? Shit, that’s lame, dingleberry.”
    “Now look, Ozzie? You know why I got the skinny on you? You know why that is?”
    He shifted to shoulder shrugs now. What little cockiness he’d summoned had evaporated. He was quiet, but the machinery of his thinking was almost audible in the tiny room.
    The fact was, Gaeton had noticed Ozzie hanging around, taking an unusual interest in