[Any pieces here are not yet joined into the story. They come later.]

The address belonged to a rinky-dink cinder block house in the fifties style on a cramped lot right on a major thoroughfare. The weeds were winning. The door looked like it might have once been kicked open, and the chain link fence was sagging.

Obi tripped along the broken sidewalk to the door. He likely wouldn't have bothered trying if there hadn't been a vehicle, which there was: an unmarked white cargo van that was accomplishing quite the color change thanks to rust. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

There was a doorbell. It dangled from its socket, though. He didn't really want to risk electrocution, so he pounded on the door, only mildly worried that it might break loose with the force.

The door was yanked open suddenly. A blobby grimy guy in a smeared T-shirt squinted out. Obi didn't exactly know how to get started. The balding man, whose remaining hair had got quite long, demanded to know what Obi wanted. At a loss, he just blurted it out: "last laugh". The man scowled and said what? Obi repeated the entirety of the message: "[address] last laugh". The he said that this was the message in the code of the trees along the Florida's Turnpike.

The man looked off at nowhere, as his eyes gradually got larger and rounder. His grimace slackened into an O, which then turned, strangely, to a small smile, getting bigger and bigger until he began to laugh. His staccato of barking laughs came faster and harder until he was gasping and reddened, wet-eyed. He pointed at Obi as if he were in on the joke, as if Obi himself had told a knee-slapper.

Suddenly, surprise seized his face and the laughter abruptly stopped. He clutched his left shoulder and fell over, the red of his face becoming purple. Obi dropped beside him, horrified, and rolled the guy fully onto his back. The man's terrified eyes seemed to be popping out. Obi whipped out his cellphone and dialed 911, but dropped the phone as the guy lost consciousness. Even more alarmed, he started the CPR ritual of checking vital signs, while shouting at the phone where he was and yelling for an ambulance.

A remote, deep place in his brain asked, "What the fuck?!"

The lights from the ambulance, police cruiser, and fire truck were sweeping round and round, swooshing across the trees and nearby buildings. The cars out on the street were slowing down, thickening up the traffic. Obi had stepped way back from the porch. He was numb from his brain down, watching in a sort of stupor as the paramedics wrapped the old guy up on the stretcher. He knew what it meant that they weren't in any particular hurry. The patient was beyond their help.

His mouth felt kind of stretched out and numb from all the blowing, doing the CPR. He brain felt extremely numb, just because. His eyes felt big and empty in the darkness, although the sweeping red and blue lights prickled a little. He heard something behind him and turned.

Looking like a whithered branch that had fallen in the forest, there leaned an old brown man against the fence. He was chuckling, and his eyes were twinkling. His head and face were liberally dusted with grey.

Obi kept one eye on the old fellow as the police officer walked up and took his statement. The cop gave him a quizical look when he explained to her just why he was visiting. He knew he probably shouldn't have told that part, but he didn't feel like holding much back at this point. When she was done with him, he turned all the way to face the old man, and found he goateed mouth smiling broadly at him.

He walked over, but before he could ask anything, the old man said that he'd gotten the last laugh. This took Obi completely aback, and he asked the man what he'd said. In his thickly accented speech, the old man said that he, the old man himself, had gotten the last laugh, hadn't he? And, in a way, so had THAT one - he indicated the man on the stretcher. After all it was HIS last laugh on this earth, now wasn't it? And the old man chuckled again.

Obi was beginning to get bewildered. The old man said that he had a story to tell, and he would, if there was a breakfast in it for him. It was nine at night, but for Obi, nothing was unusual today. Against all better judgement about giving rides to strangers, he showed the old man his Ford Grenada, and they were on their way to Denny's.

See, that fellow there was Marty. Me and Marty did landscaping. I still do, actually; I take care of several state government sites. And yes, the Turnpike is my baby. You would think, to look at me, that I'm too old to be doing that, but you'd be wrong. I'm strong. Feel my arm there. See? Like steel.

Marty and I used to be partners. We got the landscaping job for the Turnpike a good twenty or so years ago, and we did a good job of it. It was steady - there was upkeep and seasonal work and replacements and such. When we were first getting it set up, we had this idea for this big joke. We'd hide a message in the landscaping, we'd put a code in there. Nobody would ever figure it out, but why the hell not.

Marty and me used to live together in that house, and so did Denise and Regina. Ooooooh Regina, that woman was damn fine. Denise was Marty's woman, and not bad looking herself, but Regina made the sun come up in the morning. Her skin was so smooth it was like touching butter. Haha, only not greasy! No, no, she was FINE. She had these eyes, they were brown, but clear brown, like a crystal, like some dark amber or like a glass of root beer.

We had just got started with the trees on the job. We were giggling sometimes, thinking about our code, but sometimes we were just working hard. We were a small business, you see, and the government hired us because we were cheap. We did this work ourselves. Yeah we had a crew, but we had them do the mowing and things like that. These trees were of special interest to me.

Then Marty did something that I could not forgive him for. This is the sad part, the painful part, and you'll see why I did what I did. Maybe now I can forgive him, now that he paid.

I came home for lunch, for a change. I wanted to see my girl. But when I got there, I found blood in the kitchen. My heart went all cold and I thought I was going to pass out. I didn't fine Denise in the house, and I knew Marty was supposed to be at the hardware store. I followed the blood to my and Gina's bedroom, and I was afraid to try the door. But I did, and it was locked.

I heard her in there. She made this afraid sound, and then she was crying. I told her it's okay baby girl, it's just me. What happened? It took a looooooong time to get her to open up the door.

She finally did, and she was shaking, her hair all in her face, and blood all over her clothes, and she took hold of me and held onto me tight, like she was going to fall off a cliff if she let go.

I couldn't get any words out of her, but I could tell by looking at her body what had happened. She'd been raped, and that blood wasn't her own. She'd stuck whoever raped her, and I had a damn sure feeling who it was that did it, and chased her into the bedroom.

I put her into the bathtub and called her sister to come get her, and I thought hard about what to do. I had already had problems with the law. It wouldn't do any of us any good for me to be in jail for finishing off that son of a bitch, if he hadn't been stuck bad enough by my girl.

Marty and Denise didn't come home. Not that night, and not the night after. I called to find out about Gina several times a day, and went over to see her both nights, but she wouldn't come out of the room they had put her in.

Marty came back, without Denise, but acting like nothing happened. He was favoring his arm, but he wanted to get on with work, which I had been doing past two days by myself with just the boys. I didn't say much of anything to him, but I knew what to do to make sure he got what was coming to him, without hurting my baby girl any worse, and without it looking like it was me.

I went down to my sister-in-law. I didn't used to talk to her much because she does those witchy things, you know what I mean, the voodoo stuff. Herbs for this and spirits for that and cards and numbers. Most of the time, I acted like I didn't believe in that stuff, but I'd seen some horrifying stuff when I was just a kid, so I knew there were things in this world that science knew nothing about. It was dangerous stuff, so I stayed away from it. Usually.

So I told her what happened and what I meant to do and she knew what I needed. She stayed up all night chanting. I don't know what all she did because I kept in the front room, but I knew she was using chicken blood for something, and I knew she was up all night. I had slept on the sofa.

In the morning, she gave me some powder. She said to get this powder into the soil of every tree we planted. If a tree had to be replaced, I had to replace the powder too. With the powder, I had to put something of the man that this was meant to strike. If he was going to be helping me plant the trees, his own sweat would be fine. I would have to wear gloves and a bandana - none of my sweat should get on the tree. If none of his sweat got on the tree, then I'd have to slap him on the back or something, then touch the tree.

I still had Regina's dress though. If there was no way to get him to sweat on the tree or its soil, I could cut a little bloody bit of that dress off and drop it down into the soil with the powder. That way, even if he wasn't working on the trees that day, I could still make sure that some of him was in every single one.

The workers and me would be fine anyway, as long as we didn't get our own sweat into every single tree. But since I was looking after every tree personally, it was better for me to be careful.

So we went on like nothing happened. We kept on working on the turnpike. We acted like our code was funny as hell, but I laughed a cold laugh, and waited.

Time went on, and Marty spent more and more time drunk, and less and less time working. Me, I had been sticking away money for a long time, and he was a dead weight around me, in every way, so after some years I bought him out. Now I still take care of the turnpike, among other things. I think he was doing something with vans, since he spent all the money he got from me. Once I got rid of him, I tried not to think about him, and got on with my life.

Still, every time one of those trees got damaged or sick, and had to be replaced, I still used the powder and the blood.

Regina, by the way, never got better. There was something else wrong with her that what he did just made that much worse. That's her story and not mine, so I won't tell it. But she's in the mental hospital now.

I had a feeling tonight on the wind that something was coming. It entered the edge of my mind that this might be the time. I was right.

He got his last laugh tonight. May he rot in hell.