Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  Caitlin thought of Cort Wesley’s “friendship” with Leroy Epps and those times she was certain she spotted her father and grandfather together grinning at her from shaded tree groves, still wearing their Ranger badges with holsters strapped around their waists. “I don’t know if that’s what I’d call them, but I definitely wouldn’t rule it out.”

  Whatley’s eyes moistened behind his glasses and he took them off to rub at the sockets as if to block his tears. “I see my boy and my wife from time to time. They both still look to be in pain, like they’re frozen in the final moments of their lives: my son getting knifed by those gangbangers and my wife in a hospital bed after alcohol had rotted out her insides. I thought the pain was supposed to end when they died. I hope that doesn’t mean they’re in hell, Ranger.”

  Caitlin felt her phone buzzing inside the pocket of her jeans, but didn’t answer it. “It’s us who visit hell from time to time, Doc. What you think you’re seeing is something you just dragged back with you. Your son’s someplace where there are no gangbangers to hurt him, and wherever that is, your wife is there, too.”

  Whatley sniffled. “I’m not normally a sentimental man.”

  “How long have you known me?”

  “All your life.”

  “You don’t have to put a label on what you’re feeling with someone you’ve known that long, Doc.”

  Her phone buzzed again and, this time, Caitlin excused herself to check it, finding CORT WESLEY lit up in the caller ID.

  “How’d it go in Elk Grove, Cort Wesley?” she asked without saying hello.

  “Just fine if you like towns that don’t exist anymore and people who aren’t supposed to be living there,” he told her. “I’m going to need something else from you, Ranger.”

  32

  WACO, TEXAS

  “How come they call you Dobby again?” David Skoll asked the tech automation whiz, who’d helped design this fully automated pharmaceutical manufacturing plant that had gone online just a few months before.

  “Not Dobby. Dobby was a character from Harry Potter. It’s Dobie. And they call me that, because my last name is Gillis.”

  “So?”

  “My mother’s favorite TV program growing up was a show called Dobie Gillis. It was actually called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, but nobody ever referred to it that way.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Ask your father.”

  “I can’t; he’s dead.”

  “Er, sorry.”

  “Don’t be, Dobie. That’s where all my money came from. The best thing the son of a bitch ever did for me was drop dead and leave me a boatload of cash. That’s what I have to take from our relationship, and I’m fine with it. I’ll take money over memories any day of the week.”

  Skoll returned his attention to the technological marvel of a world revealed beyond the observation glass below, nary a human in sight in a massive area the size of five football fields laid next to each other.

  “I heard recently that before too long the most employees a place like this will have is two: a man and a dog,” Skoll resumed. “The man is there to feed the dog and the dog is there to make sure—”

  “—the man doesn’t screw up.”

  “You heard it, too.”

  Gillis nodded from behind his horn-rimmed glasses. He was in his midthirties, but his paunchy frame and thinning hair made him look older, despite wearing yesterday’s jeans and a T-shirt that read I BRAKE FOR ASSHOLES.

  Automated assembly lines were hardly anything new; auto factories had been using robots to perform menial line tasks for decades. The difference here at Redfern Pharmaceuticals, the company Skoll’s hedge fund had acquired at a virtual fire sale after manipulating the stock price, was Gillis had taken that principle a whole bunch of steps further.

  Instead of being moored or anchored to a fixed slot, a number of the “Bots,” as Gillis called them, moved independently about the line, performing quality-control checks. Kind of like giant, man-sized, sophisticated versions of the robotic vacuum cleaners capable of memorizing room layouts and intuitively deciphering how to avoid getting trapped in a corner or against a piece of furniture.

  Gillis’s Bots, on the other hand, looked more culled from something out of the first generation of Terminator machines as portrayed in the film series. Skoll had enjoyed his share of dalliances out in Hollywood and had put some hedge fund capital into a couple of studio film slates—not because he ever expected them to turn a profit, since he knew Hollywood didn’t work that way. Being a player, though, gave him the in he needed to meet actresses, which, given his looks and money, almost inevitably led to the next step.

  Of course, those looks had suffered a beating, literally, at the hands of Armand Fisker the night before. Skoll noticed Gillis eyeing the makeup job he’d done on the black-and-blue spots, and was late to their meeting here at the Redfern Pharmaceuticals manufacturing plant in Waco because of a necessitated stopover at his dentist’s office to get his temporary teeth installed, so he’d at least look good as new.

  Right now, he couldn’t take his eyes off the giant humanoid-like machines rolling along atop wheels built into their undersides.

  “I can see why you gave them those armlike extremities,” Skoll said to Gillis, “but why build them with neck and head-like extensions?”

  “Because people accept robots better when they look more like us,” Gillis explained. “Call it a sense of familiarity. Maybe it’s even more than that, since almost every robot made to resemble humanoid dimensions has its ‘brain’ function in its head.” Gillis flashed Skoll a look like something had just magically occurred to him. “Maybe you should think about building a different kind of assembly line.”

  “I’m considering that, as we speak,” Skoll said, visions of dollar signs dancing in his head at the mere thought of landing military contracts someday.

  That would enable him to tell the likes of Armand Fisker to go fuck themselves, he thought, watching four of the wheeled, eight-foot-tall contraptions rolling about the various stations of the line below that molded, stamped, cut, apportioned, packaged, boxed, and labeled the dozen drugs manufactured at this facility. Exposed cables ran from their narrow torsos up to their steel shoulders, looking like muscular, rubbery sinews. Their legs were combined into a single base and their arms were capable of full articulation to the point Gillis claimed they could retrieve a single pill that had spilled off the line with their pincers without crushing it. The robots whisked about, stopping at every juncture where a red light garnered their attention to signal something awry. Skoll watched as they freed clogs of cardboard or stuck foil wrapping, moving on to reboot dispensing systems that had shut themselves down to avoid overheating. The robots couldn’t join a union, didn’t complain about working conditions, never bartered over overtime, needed no medical benefits, and couldn’t testify against him in court. So Skoll firmly believed Redfern Pharmaceuticals had uncovered the perfect formula for a thriving business:

  Remove people from the equation.

  Gillis had programmed these robots with a rudimentary artificial intelligence that allowed them to both learn from their labors and deduce simple repair tasks not necessarily included in their programming. And the results spoke for themselves. Since Redfern’s Waco facility had replaced three hundred workers with a pile of diodes, microchips, rubber, and steel, productivity had increased threefold. On their best days, human workers couldn’t even begin to replicate the pace and efficiency of machines. And machines didn’t carry germs, infections, or environmental toxins capable of contaminating the pharmaceuticals they were charged with producing, adding an extra benefit to the equation.

  “I’d like to hear more about the military versions of our friends down there,” Skoll said to Gillis, eyes riveted to the scene in the sprawling plant beneath him.

  PART FOUR

  Boys, you have followed me as far as I can ask you to do unless you are willing to go with me. It is like going into the jaw
s of death with only twenty-six men in a foreign country where we have no right according to law but as I have [gone] this far I am going to finish with it. Some of us may get back or part of us or maybe all of you or maybe none of us will get back.… I don’t want you unless you are willing to go as a volunteer.… Understand there is no surrender in this. We ask no quarter nor give any. If any of you don’t want to go, step aside.

  —Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly; November 1875, as reported in The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900 Mike Cox, Forge Books, 2008

  33

  ELK GROVE, TEXAS

  Armand Fisker pulled back the cover on his son’s truck halfway, enough to reveal dings and dents that looked like the kid had gotten caught in a hailstorm of mythic proportions.

  “When did you plan on telling me about this?” he asked Ryan, who hovered behind him.

  “There’s nothing to tell, Dad.”

  They’d taken the biggest house in the former ghost town for themselves, and then worked on building this garage. Those weeks gave Fisker hope, both for his son and their relationship. In the course of the build, it got so he could actually envision Ryan following in his footsteps, picking up the mantle when he stepped down. It was different between him and his dad, because Cliven Fisker had gone to jail for murder at the age of thirty, when Armand was nine, and died there just after his son’s thirty-fifth birthday. Plenty of what he’d done before, and everything he’d done in Huntsville, had laid the groundwork for what Armand Fisker was building now. Taking the foundation his father had laid for a base and building a massive, ever-expanding structure atop it. Thinking about it that way made it seem oddly similar to building the garage with his own son, a metaphor of sorts.

  Except that’s where things stopped. Ryan was every bit the hothead his grandfather had been, owning every bit of the temper and rashness of Cliven Fisker, while combining it with none of the cunning or intelligence. That damn cowboy’s story about what Ryan was up to in East San Antonio was more or less typical. The boy lacked the subtleties necessary for dealing with people and inspiring them to follow him. And, instead of learning the business here by his father’s side, he was content to terrorize and bully others to wash himself in his own sense of power and superiority. If Ryan wasn’t his son, Fisker would’ve already deemed him an utter piece of shit incapable of living up to whatever potential his last name afforded.

  “Why don’t we start with who did this to your truck?” Fisker asked, not about to let it go.

  “I thought maybe somebody was stripping a roof and got a bit careless.”

  “Bullshit!” Fisker wailed, slapping his son across the face.

  “Ouch! What the fuck you—”

  Fisker slapped him again. “Don’t you ever swear at me, boy! I’m not one of those lackey losers who follow you around ’cause you happen to share my last name.”

  Ryan’s eyes had already teared up from the slaps, but the remark seemed to stun him even more, leaving his mouth hanging open with air leaking out the way it did from a tire with a nail stuck in it.

  “That hurt, son? Good, ’cause I meant it to. I’m gonna ask you again, who did this to your truck?”

  “I didn’t see him,” the boy said, sniffing now, but stopping short of wiping his eyes for the satisfaction it would give his father.

  “It wasn’t the white kid you were rousting?”

  “No, I had eyes on him the whole time. I think the bricks came from an alley across the street.”

  “His father came to see me.”

  “Whose father?”

  “The white kid’s. Fancies himself a badass. Used to work for a second-rate crime family out of New Orleans who couldn’t shine your grandfather’s shoes.”

  Ryan Fisker took in a deep breath and held it briefly. “I’m gonna get him.”

  “Say that again.”

  “I’m gonna—”

  Fisker’s third slap, the hardest yet, cut off his son’s words and left a scarlet palm imprint across his cheek. “You’re gonna cut this shit out, that’s what you’re gonna do. It ends now, all of it. You wanna go roust illegals and mix it up with some white kid who figures he’s a superhero, do it on a bicycle, because you’ve lost your driving privileges.”

  “You can’t—”

  This time, Ryan stopped his own words when Fisker got his hand into slapping position again. “What is it you were saying?”

  “Nothing.”

  Fisker walked the long length of the big truck, pulling back the cover as he went, revealing more of the pockmarks, dings, and shattered glass. “That’s right—nothing. Which pretty much describes all you’ve made of yourself. Until now, I guess I’ve been looking the other way, since you kept your behavior at a distance. But what you did yesterday brought a stranger out here, to our home and place of business. That makes him a threat and he came to Elk Grove following the trail you left. County sheriff’s on his way out here right now to help me figure out how to clean up your mess. And until it’s cleaned up, you and your loser running buddies are gonna stick around smoking weed and playing video games, things normal losers do, which for you is an improvement. Hey, if you’ve got any questions, feel free to stop me.”

  Ryan sniffled again, looked down, and kicked at the garage floor. Fisker figured maybe what he should do was take a knife to his boy, instead of an open hand. Scar up that pretty face and hair he’d inherited from his mother Fisker had long told him had run off years before, along with a pissant attitude and spineless nature. He’d been fooling himself for too long about the prospects for his one child’s future. Left to continue on this track, Ryan would end up in prison getting fucked instead of being the one doing the fucking. The polar opposite of his dad and grandfather. Time for some tough love, in other words, starting today. Help the kid turn over a new leaf.

  “Know what I should do?” Fisker challenged, from the front of the dented truck to his son at the rear. “Make you pay out of your own pocket to get this fixed at that body shop where those illegals you rousted work. Has a nice ring to it.”

  “I think he was part Mexican,” his son said out of nowhere.

  “Who?”

  “The kid, the one who drew a nine-millimeter on me. Or doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “The count was four guns against one and I’m sure you boys were packing the heavy artillery.”

  Fisker watched his son swallow hard, the palm impression showing no sign of fading from his cheek. “Do I really have to get the truck fixed at that place?”

  “No, but only because that would mean venturing out of town. We got a couple boys on the payroll who know their way around body work,” Fisker said, running his hand along the truck’s finish, and feeling it dip into the spots where the bricks had left their mark. “I think I’ll have them take a look at the damage.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Ryan said, still kicking up dust from the floor.

  “Oh, don’t thank me, son. You’re gonna be doing the heavy work, including giving the truck a paint job that’ll look showroom fresh. These boys are gonna be there just to teach you the tricks of the trade. That way, you’ll be ready if I decide to have you swap places with that kid in East San Antonio. Part Mexican or not, he sounds like the kind of boy I’d rather have by my side than you. Of course, I’ve got a feeling his father isn’t going away anytime soon, thanks to this stunt y’all pulled off. Maybe I’m gonna have to kill him on account of you, in which case maybe I’ll have you pull the trigger to see if you can kill a man without wetting your undies.”

  Fisker heard someone clearing their voice and turned toward the driveway where the McMullen County sheriff was standing, his frame equally divided between sun and shade.

  “We need to talk, Armand,” he said, his expression grim and four. “We need to talk now.”

  34

  ELK GROVE, TEXAS

  Donnell T. Gaunt was serving his twelfth consecutive two-year term as sheriff, his complacency over reelection reflected i
n the belly that hung over his belt. His round face, beet-red from the heat of the day that had lingered into early evening, featured bulging jowls and eyes that looked like tiny marbles recessed amid the flaps of skin beneath coarse, thinning hair.

  “I ran that name for you,” he said to Armand Fisker.

  “And since you drove all the way out here for a heart-to-heart tells me what you found can’t be good.”

  “That would be an understatement, Arm. You want the bad news or the bad news?”

  There wasn’t much shade where they stood in the front yard, and the sheriff’s face seemed to grow redder with each breath and word. Fisker enjoyed watching Donnell Gaunt roast in the dwindling sunlight, reminding him of the pleasure he’d taken in setting fire to ants as a boy.

  “Why don’t you decide, Sheriff?” he said to Gaunt.

  “The stuff you told me about Cort Wesley Masters was easy to confirm. His criminal record working for the Branca crime family, the four years he did in Huntsville on a murder beef gone bad, his release after he was exonerated by a DNA test. The rest, well, let’s just say it raises more questions than answers.”

  “And, as in the rest, you mean…”

  “The years before and after what I just told you. Masters served in the Army Special Forces during the Gulf War in the early nineties, a genuine Green Beret. I’m going to assume you didn’t know that.”

  “You’d be assuming correctly,” Fisker acknowledged, trying very hard not to appear rattled by what he was learning about the father of the boy his son had nearly gone to guns with, before bricks had rained out of the sky.

  Sheriff Gaunt was nodding, his head looking like a basketball set on a spindle, bobbing up and down. “Which means you couldn’t have known that when I pinged him in the system, the request came back flagged.”

  “How’s that?”

  “A polite way Washington says to bug off, meaning there’s stuff in Masters’ file I lack the security clearance to access.”

  “Was that the bad news or the bad news?”