very short mystery story about 150 words
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Answer:
he old man blinked awake, roused from his nap by the drone of the bush plane overhead. He glanced up, just catching its locust’s-wing shadow as it skimmed the edge of the jungle, banking toward the south. More tourists, he thought sourly, on their way to the ruins at Palenque or Bonampak.
He managed to sit up straighter in the cane chair, and with outstretched fingers, grasped the slippery railing, pulling himself closer. He gasped once from the effort, and peered expectantly down at the lake.
There she was, waist deep in the water, waving up at the disappearing plane. Her long brown hair fanned her shoulders in wet ringlets.
She turned suddenly, wholly naked, and he saw the swell of her breasts as she bent to slip below the surface. She swam with graceful, even strokes, moving through the haze that hung over the water, until she vanished amid the drooping foliage at the far edge of the shore.
The old man sighed gratefully, chin resting on the rail. A sudden rain had come up, misty and warm, and behind it a gentle gust that blew through the open spaces of the verandah. Across the lake, through the haze, the breadnut trees shimmered like ghosts.
The estate, originally built at the turn of the century by a Belgian merchant, lay deep in the jungle’s marrow, the shallow lake long since reclaimed by riotous vegetation. Even now there was just one dirt access road, the nearest village a hard half-day’s journey away. Since coming here nearly ten years ago, the man had done nothing to disturb the somber dignity of the great house, the heavy stillness of the foliage embracing it.
It was perfect, his life here. For him, and for her…
Then he remembered, and his face grew pale as chalk. The violation she’d endured, the horrible pain—
And yet, ironically, it was because of this outrage, this sin, that the girl was finally back in his life, here at his side, after the long years of estrangement.
Here, where he’d gone into hiding after being hounded by the Feds; here, where in seclusion his legendary status as the Boss of Bosses had only grown among the crime families on the East Coast; here, where he’d at last found the isolation in which he could prepare his soul for its Final Destination.
But not before he’d performed one last task. Not before he’d extended his hand one last time into the affairs of men. Not before one last, and most important, judgment had been rendered…
“Carlos!” The old don’s voice rattled in his throat. He felt numb, half-asleep; embalmed by age and illness. He pushed up from the chair with his elbows, bony points in the loose-fitting white suit. Everything ached, pinched, conspired.
“Carlos!” he called again, squinting down the length of the verandah. “Where the hell are you?”
arlos stayed where he was, slowly folding the sheaf of papers and slipping them back in his pocket. He turned at the railing, looked with the old man into the mists of shore-line.
“I said you could leave now, Carlos.”
Scraping the dirt. Doing the day’s work.
All around were the sounds of other tools at work, the labored breathing of the men using them. There were only eight, not counting himself, yet after all this time Hobart could only put a few names and faces together.
Not that it mattered, he reminded himself. They were all the same.
All the same. Broken men, failed vocations. Doing the penance of the fields. Working in the afternoon sun, sweating into their ludicrous sandals or sneakers, tending the gardens like medieval monks. Striving for their grace, he thought murkily, or at least a semblance of their ruthless piety.
Not his flesh, not his blood, and yet how like him I am.
The END