The third reason I was only a few miles over the speed limit letting cars, vans and trucks whip past me was that I was reasonably sure I was too late. I didn’t know if I wanted to get where I was going in time to stop a murder.

The radio was on. I seldom listened to music, I liked a voice, almost any voice, a southern Baptist preacher, G. Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, an abusive local talk-show host on WFLA out of Tampa using words I thought were prohibited by the FCC. If I were lucky, I’d catch NPR and listen to All Things Considered or Fresh Air but really, any voice would do and I didn’t always listen to the words.

I wasn’t alone in the car. Ames McKinney sat erect, seat-belted next to me, riding shotgun. Literally. He had an old Remington M-10 twelve gauge pump-action shotgun lying across the lap of his yellow slicker. Ames seldom spoke. He had said almost all he had to say in his seventy-four years of life. Ames looked like an aged Gary Cooper with long white hair and a face of sunned leather.

He knew how to use a gun, though he was not supposed to have one. Ames had come to Sarasota three years earlier in search of his business partner, who had run off with all the money from the sale of their business back in Arizona. Ames and his partner had gone out to the white sand behind the trees on South Lido Beach and had an old-fashioned shoot-out. Ames won. The judge called it justifiable homicide and gave Ames a suspended sentence for carrying an illegal firearm. There are actually laws about dueling in Florida, but the judge wasn’t about to invoke them. The partner fired first. Actually, the partner fired four times before Ames shot him. I was there. I testified on his behalf. Ames thinks I saved him from Old Sparky.