Run for Your Life, Riley Horner!:
A “Tell No One” Mystery #1
by Sara M. Barton
Published by Sara M. Barton at Smashwords
Copyright Sara M. Barton 2012
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Chapter One --
Three days. That’s how long I’ve been on the run. I’m down to my last forty bucks. If I don’t get answers to my questions soon, I don’t think I’m going to be able to save my heinie. I’ve got bad guys chasing me and limited options. The FBI threw me out into the cold, all because of a deep, dark secret that no one wants to shine a light on. Too many powerful people will be upset. Too much collateral damage, politically speaking. Nobody wants this can of worms turned upside down. It’s “Pin the Tail on Riley” time.
Looking back, I can tell you the exact moment it all went bad. I was doing what I do, observing criminals at work, and I recognized one of them. What’s more, he recognized me, too. And from that moment on, I knew I was running for my life.
You might assume that I’m some kind of lowlife wretch because I hang out where crimes are committed. You might even assume I condone that lifestyle and think it’s just the way things are. After all, sharks swim with the sharks. Once a shark, always a shark, right?
On the winter night in question, I was sitting in my car, reading license plates in the caravan of organized crime cars. They were circling the block over and over again, making it look like a very busy area, all in anticipation of the arrival of their drug shipment. You see, in a busy city like Boston, cops tend to pay attention to unusual activity. If you don’t want them to look at you funny, you have to blend in. That’s why the “Backstreet Boys” were constantly driving around the corner, to establish cover for their criminal operation. That and they had a couple of uniforms in their pocket.
How I got here is a long story. It’s not how I ever expected my life would work out. In fact, to be honest, I never knew people could be so...despicable. Sometimes, when you look at the surface of a pond, the water can look so lovely, you want to just jump in, especially on a hot day. But terrible things can await you just under the surface, out of sight, and you can risk your life just for a few moments’ pleasure. You have to ask yourself once in awhile, “Is it worth it to find out?” I’ve answered that question more times than I care to remember, and the results weren’t always what I had hoped they would be. Sometimes the journey is perilous, no matter what you do.
My life changed in so many ways after I took the job working as a school librarian at Wexler Elementary in Hambleport, just before all the guano hit the fan ten years ago. I’m a Massachusetts girl, born and raised. After a month-long commute back and forth from my parents’ home in Salem while I apartment-shopped my way through the high-rent district in this seaside town, I finally signed a lease on an apartment above a bookstore in Hambleport. The doll-sized space had enough charm to keep it from feeling completely claustrophobic, even though it was barely bigger than a walk-in closet, sported a shower that had an angled roof more Hobbit-friendly than I cared to admit, and the monthly rent took a huge chunk out of my take-home pay. It wasn’t cheap to live among the swells along High Street.
Wondering where I went wrong? The answer’s simple. I went from being oblivious to the obvious, Queen of the Naive, to being overly aware of what was happening all around me. It’s not a pretty story, but it’s one that needs to be told.
I started out as an English major at Boston University. My goal was to become a children’s author, to write books for young people like the ones that so inspired me. I love books. Elsie Holmelund Minarik and her “Little Bear” got me hooked on reading after my formative years on nursery rhymes. I graduated to “The Boxcar Children” series as I turned eight, discovered Dick King-Smith and his “Babe” when my fourth grade teacher read it aloud to the class. Later on, I fell in love with “Sarah, Plain and Tall” when we were studying the migration to the West, thinking the character of Sarah was the most amazing woman ever to take a chance on a new life. I even learned to enjoy fantasy novels with “Howl’s Moving Castle”, even though that’s not my favorite genre. “The Ruby in the Smoke”, and “To Kill a Mockingbird” got me thinking about life as an adult and what kind of person I wanted to be. From there, I just immersed myself in reading novels of every kind, studying how the really good storytellers drew readers in, and as I got myself through college, I made plans to be a writer, even as I knew I probably had to pay the rent with other jobs along the way. It would be worth the sacrifice, I told myself.
After graduating from Boston University with a minor in kiddie lit, I got a Masters in library science at Simmons. The pay at Wexler Elementary wasn’t great, but it was enough to support my dream to write. I had the chance to study successful stories during my work hours. I learned to track down information and became a reference whiz when kids needed help with their school projects. I even honed my skills as a storyteller during weekly “Book Time” sessions with a captive audience of schoolchildren, where I observed what captured the attention of those eager students and what bored the life out of them.
Even as the rejection slips began to pile up with the returned manuscripts, I didn’t let that discourage me. Come what may, I would write my clever novels. I would entertain readers, draw them out of their everyday ordinary lives, and take them along on an adventure. Little did I know that in order to do that, I would have to have an adventure of my own -- one that would forever transform me from the mild-mannered, trusting children’s librarian lurking in the stacks, to an information analyst for a secret government operation, with too much knowledge about some really powerful folks. Boy, when you cross the wrong people, they just don’t ever drop it. That’s really why I’m on the run. What I found out accidentally all those years ago has finally come back to haunt me. That’s why I’m running for my life.
It started when several middle school kids came to me for help in finding the local stations on the Underground Railroad. After consulting a local historian and immersing myself in the records down in the Genealogy Room of the Hambleport Public Library, I was forced to give them the bad news. The only local stop of which there was adequate evidence and documentation was a couple of towns away. Despite all the self-promotion by local folks about their noble ancestors, Hambleport was never a stop on the Underground Railroad.
The more I read, the more fascinated I became, because the myth was so far removed from the reality. Could this become a book for young adults? Could I weave a mystery out of it and throw in some history at the same time? That school project became my inspiration.
I spent my off-hours doing the research on the North Shore, trying to unravel the puzzle of how the tales of brave souls helping escaped slaves became legend. As a shipbuilding port on the New England coast, the town was known for the famous clipper ships that sailed the Seven Seas. Common lore embraced the claim that the people of the seaport town were dedicated abolitionists who fought for the freedom of slaves. Only problem? Hambleport’s economy depended on the shipments of cotton brought up from the south for the mills to make into cloth. No cotton, no mills. No mills, no income. Even then, the people of Hambleport were playing a double game, helping the Confederacy get its uniforms, even as they were sending Union soldiers to war. What’s more, the most vocal of the ab
olitionists were actually run out of town by the angry mob. Hambleport was never a sanctuary for escaped slaves. Those who managed to flee their oppressive masters had good reason to fear for their safety in this town.
Once I found out just how unsupportive the town of Hambleport actually was of the Union cause, the questions began to pile up. So many stories circulated of the many High Street homes with secret rooms, of tunnels running underground to the harbor, of the mysterious comings and goings of phantom ships that off-loaded contraband goods in the wee small hours of the night. All that turned out to be true, but not because Hambleport was helping save the lives of runaway slaves. Hambleport was a smuggler’s paradise, where people looked the other way as liquor, and later drugs, were brought into town from the big ships and distributed inland.
Not only was Hambleport a Mecca for contraband, its wealthy citizens, those stellar pillars of the community with their portraits hung in the public library, Town Hall, and even the local Darlington Trust, directed the smuggling networks, organizing everything from the importation of contraband, the money-laundering of the profits, and even the reinvestment of the profits into high-yield investments. As a major port during the Second Opium War, the citizens of the town were active in facilitating the Far East shipments to Britannia, disguising the goods in bundles of silk destined for the drawing rooms of Europe. Several prominent families gained prestige and power as they built their empires on the addictions of the wealthy and poor. Some even profited from the opium “joints” in the mean streets of Boston and New York. While some of the opium was legitimately prescribed by physicians and pharmacists for patients with pain, an alarming amount of the drug was going up in smoke out of the public eye. Far from being a harmless high, opium and its derivatives began to take a toll on their users. The powerful pull of the euphoric dance began to destroy the very lives that sought its magical powers as an elixir. But once Hambleport came to depend on that income, there was no way the profiteers were ever going to stop pushing their product on the people. For them, it was an economic issue. They had huge houses and fancy lifestyles to support. The runners and the off-loaders needed the work. The town was dependent on drug smuggling to survive, and they were damned if they were going to let their consciences talk them out of the business.
Funny how some things never change. Where there’s a need for material goods like an enemy’s cotton or drugs like opium, the people in the business of transportation will always find a way to move product into the hands of the buyers. Even after I moved to Hambleport in 2002, the drug business was flourishing. But, as in all industry, the leaders in the local endeavor got creative and moved with the times. In the new millennium, it was fake computer components that masked the cocaine. I found that out the hard way, but I was only able to recognize the gravity of the situation by knowing the town’s sullied history of smuggling.
Over the century and a half since the clipper ships gave way to steamboats, the stakes grew higher and the profit margins widened. When Prohibition arrived and the rum runners were challenged by the concerted efforts of law enforcement, the smugglers went back to the old-fashioned way of doing things, disguising their activities, reestablishing the old smuggling routes along the coast, corrupting law enforcement in the region, and utilizing the old tricks of the trade. The liquor was off-loaded from big ships coming from Cuba and the Caribbean onto trawlers and commercial fishing boats. Often, the liquor was then deposited on a deserted beach, tucked away in some remote locale, and later removed by truck or tractor to a farmer’s barn, where it was then driven into Boston and distributed by organized crime figures like Blackjack Barry. Hambleport was a thriving city, thanks to the liquor brought in by the fishing fleet, and when the bars finally reopened, the smuggling network was so successful and the routes so well-established, they switched to heroin and cocaine in the thirties, along with the marijuana. No wonder the big joke in town was that everyone wanted to live on High Street.
But it was the late sixties that really knocked Hambleport for a loop. With such an illustrious history of success in smuggling goods in and out of the country, Hambleport became a favorite place for Boston’s organized crime to offer its protection services. That meant a compromise with the hierarchy. With a ravenous demand for drugs from the younger generation, especially down in the Boston area, where the swells sent their kids to be educated at Harvard, Radcliffe, Wellesley, and other institutions of higher learning, the well-established families saw an easy opportunity to increase their wealth. It was a “Who’s Who” of American Revolution descendants, padding their pockets with cash. The handling of sales and distribution not only required good logistics and network management, but also good security, and the best of the best came from law enforcement. A lot of effort was made to run the organized, effective smuggling ring like a business. Everyone, from the president of the local bank to the mayor to the police chief to the entire town council, was connected in some form to the long history of smuggling in Hambleport. When new folks moved to town and wondered why they couldn’t seem to find acceptance, even decades after arriving, it was less to do with their inability to be productive citizens and more to do with security for the smuggling industry in Hambleport.
It almost went bad for the town when the mayor’s nephew was busted in the “Harbor Rat” scandal in the early eighties. Several townspeople got caught off-loading a big shipment of marijuana with a truck from Dawson Silver Company, a local manufacturer of flatware whose designs dated back to the Revolutionary War. Everyone’s heard of Paul Revere, but Roger Dawson? Not so much. That didn’t stop the Hambleport crowd from utilizing the company as cover for their drug business.
I wasn’t living there when all that happened, although I did read reports of it when I was flipping through microfilm at the public library a few months after I arrived. My real introduction to Hambleport’s present-day seedy side came when I ran head-first into a very ugly power struggle between a manager of operations and an importer of goods, and it only happened because I went out for pizza one day and wound up watching a pizza shop owner have a complete hissy fit when he didn’t get his propers from one of Hambleport’s most-respected citizens.
It was on a Saturday, in early March, after two weeks of snowstorms and a killer Nor’easter that knocked out power for three days. I had been living in town for about thirteen months by then.
On that particular day, I was sick of being cooped up in my tiny attic garret, so I threw on my jeans, a sweater, boots, and my parka and trudged down to Apollo Pizza for a slice and a diet Coke. At quarter to two in the afternoon, the shop was quiet. I pulled out my paperback and settled back with a slice of deluxe, everything on it, lingering as I read, enjoying every morsel. When Paul Darlington stepped into the shop, I heard a sudden buzz behind the counter. The young man chopping vegetables suddenly looked stricken. Wiping his hands on his apron, he trotted out of sight, and a moment later Ares Papadopoulos sauntered out into the dining room. His eyes were unfocused, his apron clean and white, and he had a surly expression on his face.
“What do you want?” he snarled at Darlington, town council member, well-known philanthropist, and scion of Darlington Trust. He had just been featured in a big spread in Boston Magazine, on how to manage family wealth from generation to generation with living trusts.
“We need to talk,” said the man in the Burberry jacket and tan corduroy slacks. His hands were out of his pockets and I could see they were clenched tightly. There was definite tension in the air.
“I am not interested in talking to the likes of you.” Ares Papadopoulos had an accent thick enough to slice with a pizza roller. “I am done with the discussions.”
“Would you prefer to hear it from someone else?” the native asked the foreigner, a warning note in his voice.
“Save your breath,” said the pizza man with a sneer. “I am making other arrangements for the deliveries. I do not need you or your friends to be successful in the...pizza business.”
�
��Big mistake, Ares.”
“I think not, Paul.”
I sat there, feeling tremendously uncomfortable as the atmospheric pressure in the room rose. I toyed with the idea of packing up my pizza to go, but I didn’t want the men to think I was deliberately eavesdropping. Instead, I shuffled my feet along the floor, making a scraping noise, just to give them a heads-up that I could hear every word. Not my smartest move.
“You got a problem, miss?” Ares was glaring at me from behind the counter.
“Oh? I’m sorry. I got lost in my book,” I apologized. “I’ll guess I’ll be going.”
“Do,” said the pizza shop owner with startling bluntness. I know a bum’s rush when I see one and this was definitely of the hostile variety. Packing my book in my purse, I started to gather my empty cup, napkins, and plate, intending to toss them in the trash can by the counter.
“Leave it. Georgie will clear that away,” said the snarling Greek with the spotless apron. “Lunch is over. We are closed.”
No doubt about it -- that was a definite dismissal. Suddenly aware of my own rising fear, of the heart that beat too fast, the knees that went weak as I tried to stand, I hurried to oblige. My trembling hands worked to push in the chair. For a brief moment, I wondered if I would get out of there alive, and that thought chilled me to the bone. It had all the tension of a face-off by two gunslingers at the Okay Corral.
Out on the sidewalk, I started walking and didn’t stop till I turned the corner. Out of sight, I took a deep breath and fell back against the brick building. I could have sworn I saw something in Ares Papadopoulos’s eyes that I was not supposed to see, something he usually concealed, or at least kept under better control. That’s when I put my finger on it. The urge to kill.
That was the last time anyone saw Paul Darlington before he disappeared. At least that’s the official story. The truth is actually much different. But no one is supposed to know that. Whatever you do, please don’t tell anyone what I am about to share with you.
Run for Your Life, Riley Horton!: A Page 1