Vacant Shore

by Jack Hardin

  “Who is it?” Chewy asked.

  “For now, since it’s a new relationship, I want to see how it shakes out before I bring all of us into it.”

  “They are just moving it for us as a new distributor?” Andrés asked. “Because with Cèsar gone our relationship with Ángeles Negros has never been better. His replacement has been worthy of the role.”

  Quinton wavered, and when he did Chewy felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. He said, “Quinton, we are behind you, you know that. You and Ringo...we respect you both.”

  “What is your concern, Chewy?”

  “But why will you not just tell us who it is?”

  “That’s fair,” Quinton said. “I know I’ve been gone, but from all that I can see and from what Ringo has told me the angle we’ve had with Kyle Armstrong and his distillery has been what my grandfather would have called the right size wrench. It was a perfect fit for us. Now that Mr. Armstrong has jumped off the deep end—” Quinton chuckled. “Excuse the pun. Now that Mr. Armstrong has made it so that we can’t work with him any longer, I’m pursuing a new direction. And it’s going to benefit all of us. A lot. I can promise you that. Expect to see your personal cash flows spike as we move forward. As soon as I’m happy with this new contact, I’ll bring you both in on it.”

  “We already get paid very fairly,” Chewy noted.

  “Yes. Yes, I know. But sometimes you just have to ‘put yourself at the front of the line to get that coin while you still have time’.” He grinned, more so with his eyes than his mouth. “Right, Chewy?” Chewy, stunned, just sat on the crate. “Anyway,” Quinton continued, “I’m excited for our future together.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to run. Just make sure to shut the door when you leave.” Then Quinton walked out of the shack, got in his boat, and headed back toward St. James City.

  Andrés turned back to look out the window. “Chewy, why do I feel something is not right?”

  Chewy stood and adjusted his coat across his shoulders. He felt it too. But he couldn’t fully decide if it was because Quinton wasn’t letting them in on the new business relationship or if it was because he had just heard Quinton quote Larry Lawrence as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if he had listened to Larry enough to—to—to quote him.

  And it was then, for only the briefest of moments, that Chewy felt something he had not experienced in his entire life.

  He felt hot.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tyler rubbed the sandpaper across the wood, smoothing out the putty that he had scraped across the nail holes a couple days prior. Particle dust fell to the deck and was quickly taken away by a good breeze coming off the water.

  No one had shown at Ellie’s house last night. Tyler had slept on the couch of the rental, and they took shifts watching the video feeds. Sometime around two in the morning Ellie woke Tyler up for his shift. They ended up talking at the kitchen table, and it was then that Ellie decided to tell him about her midnight escapades to work alongside the homeless. Javier said she was to be at the pickup spot the next evening, and if they didn’t see anything on the monitors before then, Ellie was going to need Tyler to watch them while she was out.

  He listened to her reasons and logic before saying anything. After saying he thought she was simply jonesing for trouble, he’d left it at that and told her to get her butt in the bed.

  Now, as Tyler rubbed at the dried wood putty, a seagull swooped down and hovered a few feet from him. It landed, cocked its head, and look at him suspiciously. “What’s the word, big fella?” He put his knees onto the deck and started at the bottom rail when he heard Gloria’s lusty voice come around the corner. “Oh, Ellie? No, she’s down at the Keys for a couple days.”

  Tyler stood up. He let the sandpaper fall to the deck and wiped his hands on his jeans. The gull snatched at the sandpaper, took several cautious steps, and took flight.

  “I think she’s planning on being back by tomorrow night,” Gloria was saying. Tyler walked inside The Salty Mangrove’s now semi-covered seating area and passed through the small kitchen before stepping behind the bar. He grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and drank slowly, looking nowhere in particular. The man speaking with Gloria was about his own height, but thick muscles were clearly defined beneath his polo shirt. He had a red beard and wore a nondescript ball cap and sunglasses.

  “Oh, Tyler,” Gloria said, “this is an old friend of Ellie’s...I’m sorry, I think I forgot your name. Did you tell me your name?”

  Fu was busy shaking his head no when the man said, “I don’t know that I did. Dugan. Dugan Spencer.”

  Tyler nodded a hello and wiped a couple droplets from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Just passing through?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes. I have a business meeting down in Naples tomorrow. Was hoping I could catch her on my way down there.”

  “She’ll hate that she missed you,” Gloria said.

  “You guys go back a ways?” Tyler asked.

  “Way back. College days. I’d heard from a mutual friend that she was still down here. No big deal.”

  Tyler looked at the newcomer. “Do you want to leave your number so she can call?”

  “Nah, I’d better be going anyway. I’ll connect with her another time.”

  He said goodbye, and while Fu was muttering in Chinese to Gloria about another one of Ellie’s secret boyfriends, Tyler watched the man get back in a skiff and ride it south toward Sanibel. Then he grabbed up his truck keys from behind the counter and jogged down the ramp to the parking lot.

  ____________________

  “Here, hand me that pencil.” Tyler looked around for a piece of paper. Not immediately seeing one he leaned over to the bookshelf hanging above the kitchen table and pulled out a Randy Wayne White hardback. He opened the front flap and pulled out the dust jacket. He set the book aside, flipped over the dust jacket, and sat down. Using a forearm to keep the paper flush against the table, he spent the next couple minutes scratching away on the paper like a frenzied accountant. He rubbed at it with his thumb a few times and tilted his head in concentration. Finally he was done and he leaned away from it for Ellie to review. She stood over the portrait and was about to comment on his skills when she registered the man represented by hard pencil lines and soft smudges.

  A sensation like melting ice chips trickled down her spine. “This guy?” she said. “You’re sure?”

  “What do you mean am I sure? This was the guy. I mean he had sunglasses on, but...” He examined her expression. “Wait. You know him?”

  She pulled out a chair and sat down, then rubbed at her temples. “It doesn’t make sense,” she groaned. “How could it be him?”

  “Who? Who is he?”

  “Trigg Deneford,” she said, still unbelieving, still confused. She spent the next five minutes filling Tyler in on the Nunez operation a couple months ago and Deneford’s role in it. How he had used his cover at Hawkwing Security to bring in tons of cocaine from Mexico. How it had been his operation that had used the old boat at Mondongo Rocks to store gas for their boats back to Mexico. She told him how it was Deneford who had bruised her ribs in the takedown that forced her to take it easy for three weeks.

  “So maybe he’s just back for revenge,” he said. “Maybe it’s a coincidence that he’d show up at the same time as you got Virgil’s message.” But then he shook his head. “That’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “Trigg got out of jail because someone high up pulled some strings,” Ellie said. “Whoever he’s working for must be tied into my old team somehow. But that would mean that they are some kind of top brass. Very few even knew about my team.”

  “Revenge?” Tyler offered up. “For something you did when you were with the Agency?”

  “Yeah. Could be.” But we disbanded four years ago. Why just now? She had no answers, and no facts at all from which to deduce any. She gathered herself, sitting up straight and rubbing her hands together. “Okay, well. Now we know who
we’re dealing with. Trigg Deneford and anyone he brings along with him.”

  Tyler said, “Since we know who’s after you now, let’s just call the police and let them in on it.”

  “No. Nothing’s changed. Deneford—this guy is an ex-Navy SEAL. If a blade of grass is out of place or a shadow displaced, he won’t show. He’ll do it another way.”

  “I can’t believe we’re sitting here talking about a guy who wants to kill you and I was five feet from him earlier today. I should have just beat his ass right there.”

  She looked at the clock. It was already eight-thirty. She was in her tank, shorts, and Doc Martens, ready to meet the van that would take her to the next job site. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Just keep an eye on the cameras. I should be back before two. If he shows tonight, we’ll flip the switch on our plan.”

  Tyler was looking intently at the drawing he had made.

  “Hey,” Ellie said, “It’s going to be all right. We’ll get him. I got him once. I can do it again.” She grabbed the old truck’s keys off the counter and walked purposefully toward the door that led to the garage. She spoke over her shoulder. “And when all this is over you’re going to tell me why I didn’t know you could draw like that.”

  “Sure thing.” He watched her walk away.

  “Without mentioning your mother,” she called back.

  “By the way,” he said. “I like your new look.” But the door had already shut. He looked over at Citrus. “What?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Reticle’s old clunker was a 1989 Ford pickup that came in three colors: blue paint, gray primer, and red rust. It ran, and that was all Ellie needed. She drove north on Route 41 and put the city lights behind her, passing open fields and fruit tree plantations until she saw a large white sign with blue letters come up on her left. It read “Duncan’s Wholesale Nursery and Landscaping.” Ellie turned onto a dirt road and drove through an open gate. She had the truck windows down, and, as she drove through the center of a palm tree plantation, scents of orange, lemon, and honeysuckle swirled through the cab. The road ran roughly a hundred yards before veering to the right and terminating at a clearing where a small building sat, a high, metal-framed pavilion behind it. Next to the pavilion was a backhoe, a Bobcat, a small shed, and a large mound of topsoil. Ellie parked in front of the building and put her phone into the glove box, locking it before she got out. No cell phone policy or not, she didn’t know what she was getting into, and she wasn’t doing it without quick access to a phone.

  A sodium light, tethered to a phone pole, whined a single, shrill note above her. There were no lights on in the building, but the pavilion was lit up. Ellie walked around to the back where a heavyset man with a black ponytail was coming toward her.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “I’m Heather Smith. Javier told me to come.”

  He folded his arms. “Yeah. Javier told me about you. He said you knew Nunez?”

  “No. That’s not what I said. I told him Jose Perez was my supplier. When Nunez died I couldn’t get a clean product.”

  He narrowed his eyes on her. “Jose, huh? Where did he dish out?”

  “What, is this a test?”

  “If you’re going to be working with us, we want to make sure you’re legit. Jose. Where did he dish out?”

  Ellie had dozens of hours combing through DEA files and photos behind her answer. “He stocked up at a house at Ridgeside. But he met his pushers at his apartment. Sometimes he would meet me behind the Stop ‘n’ Shop.”

  “So you’ve been to his place? What picture did he have in his eating area?”

  “Anyone who knew Jose was aware that he had a thing for Marilyn Monroe.”

  “You talk to him lately?”

  “He was going to get me connected to another candyman before he got shanked in prison. So, no. I haven’t talked to him in a while.”

  He nodded, pleased. “I’m AJ. Follow me.” He led her into the pavilion, which smelled of fresh turned dirt and synthetic fertilizer. The dirt floor was filled with unplanted fruit and palm trees, their root balls wrapped in burlap. One man stood at the far end looking at his phone. “This is a commercial nursery,” AJ said as they continued walking, “so it closes down at five every night. We work a night shift of sorts. Sometimes there’s nothing to do. Sometimes there’s a lot to do. Lately, we’ve been busy and we needed someone else on the crew.” He looked her over. “But I don’t know that we’ve ever had a chick on our crew.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Guess not. It’s not my job to complain.” He stopped next to the other man who turned and slid his phone into a pocket. He sized her up. “This here is Julip,” AJ said. Julip was a small man, both in height and bone structure. If it weren’t for the lined and weathered skin on his narrow face, Ellie might have taken him for a twelve-year-old boy. He wore a black Yankees hat turned backward, and when he spoke a couple gold teeth sparkled in the lights.

  “H-H-Hi,” he said.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “I-It-It-it’s g-g-g-ood t-t—”

  “Julip stutters,” AJ interrupted. “So don’t ask him a question unless you can wait half an hour for the the answer.” Even Julip smiled at that.

  “So what is it we do here?” Ellie asked.

  “We wait for deliveries. Sometimes one comes, sometimes it doesn’t. They just want us here for when it does.”

  “And when it does? What do we do?” she asked.

  “We unload. But while we wait they’ve got us working on building a cellar. This is Julip’s last night, so you’re taking his place. You do good work, the boss will hear about it. You don’t, the boss will hear about that too.”

  A soft rumble issued from the road and grew louder until a large delivery truck appeared, its side christened with the nursery’s logo. The truck turned out into a wide arc and then reversed into the pavilion. The driver shut the truck off, jumped down, then walked to the rear door and unlocked it. It rattled as he pushed it up. He engaged the tailgate lift, and the steel plate flipped out and rose up until it was flush with the truck’s floor. He scrambled up and, using a pallet jack, brought out two full pallets from the back of the truck and set them on the lift. AJ pressed a button beside the door, and the lift slowly came down. Five minutes later the pallets were sitting in the middle of the pavilion and the truck had left. AJ went over to a control pad mounted to a steel support beam. He pressed a button with a note above it that read “front gate.”

  The pallets were stacked high with white plastic bags labeled as fertilizer. Julip pulled off the stretch wrap as AJ explained what they were to do. He slapped a hand on one of the bags. “If you look close, some bags have a green stripe on the bottom and some have a yellow one. We take the green ones out and restack all the yellow ones back on the pallets and wrap them again.

  “Th-th-then w-w-w—” Julip tried explaining, but AJ cut him off.

  “Then we take the green ones around back, dig a hole, and throw them in.”

  “Dig a hole?” Ellie asked.

  “Yeah, it’s basically the same one every time. The soil is loose. Someone comes and gets them before the nursery opens again. They won’t be here tomorrow.”

  “B-b-but th-that’s wh-wh-why we’re build-building a c-c-cellar,” Julip said.

  So that’s what they did. The three of them dug a large hole, tossed in the bags that Ellie was fairly certain were full of drugs, and filled in the hole. When they were done, the three of them shiny with sweat, Ellie asked if that was all the job entailed. “Some nights we’ll get more than one delivery,” AJ said. “But I don’t know until they’re right outside the gate. They’ll send me a text. They do it that way because the boss doesn’t like us knowing too much. Let’s take a breather and then we can get working on the cellar until it’s time to go.”

  They took a break every hour. Neither AJ nor Julip seemed too intent on breaking much of a sweat. It turned out that Mark’s lead had been r
ight after all, and Ellie had stumbled into something. As much as that excited her, as much as she hoped this might lead her to Ringo, tonight she just wanted to be at home, watching the monitors, preparing to spread her net over Trigg Deneford. When they took another break Ellie looked at the clock hanging on a support column. It was nearly eleven.

  Two more hours.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Tyler’s head lowered slowly until his chin dropped to his chest before flopping back up like an open Pez dispenser. His eyes shot open and he took in a deep breath. He rubbed at his eye sockets with his palms and stared wide-eyed at the bank of monitors—those silent, black and white images that had just nearly lulled him to sleep. Citrus was asleep in his bed, set against the outer edge of the couch. “A lot of help you are,” Tyler quipped. He stood up and walked over to the coffee pot. He grabbed a mug and poured himself a cup, then put it in the microwave. While he waited for it to heat up, he went back to the monitors.

  A minute later the microwave beeped, and he went back over and took the mug out, then sat back at the kitchen table and watched for the man who wanted to kill Ellie.

  When Tyler was a small boy living in West Texas, on a particularly slow-moving Saturday morning in late August, a knock had come at his front door. This was just after the hungry jaws of their elementary school had reopened with a renewed commitment to spend the next nine months chewing the summer’s healing right out of their bones. Tyler opened the door to see his best friend, Buster Simmons, standing on the veranda, his lips slapped across half a bag of Big League Chew, his right hand clutching his .22 Fieldmaster rifle. Buster, trying not to choke on his gum, said that Tyler had to be as bored as he was and why didn’t they head out and knock off a few squirrels? Tyler’s folks had gone off to Amarillo for the day and had left him alone. Tyler was indeed bored, so he said sure and trotted back to his dad’s office and pulled his .410 shotgun off the rack. That was back in the days when a boy growing up in West Texas learned how to respect a gun before he could say half his ABCs or had enough sense to know good brisket from great.