The fire in his eyes flared up. He turned toward the gun and shouted, “I said, ‘Kill this..!’”
The words dropped off as I found the second to charge. The barrel of the gun drooped as the pockmarked man’s attention moved to his partner. The second man was just close enough for me to grab by the lapels of his jacket. I twisted him around like a shield and propelled us off the dock.
The gun fired at the same time I heard, or maybe felt, the man in my hands hit the hull of the houseboat with a thud. He went limp, but I dragged him down, staying beneath him. Through the dark, murky water, I saw two flashes. I couldn’t hear the shots.
Releasing the other man, I pushed him toward the surface and kicked away from the Gibson.
The next dock finger was J dock, approximately 100 yards away. I wasn’t going to be able to cover that much distance on the lung full of air I had. After half a minute, my chest burned. I was out of shape, but I pushed forward another five seconds before breaking through the surface, grabbing a lungful of air, and diving under again.
When the water grew darker, I came through the surface with my left hand above my head. My palm felt a slimy, barnacled hull. Kicking my feet, I swam along the bottom of the boat and surfaced on the starboard side.
I took soft, shallow breaths as I scanned the area. There was no one standing near the Gibson. Something floated just off the houseboat’s stern.
I floated between the boat and the dock with just the top of my head above water. If the pocked-faced man came searching for me, I wanted to slip under the surface quietly.
Minutes passed before I decided that the coast was clear. I crawled onto the swim platform of the older trawler I surfaced beside. From the vantage point of the dock, I could make out the lifeless body of Goatee floating between the H and J docks.
“So much for sleeping,” I mumbled to myself as I walked toward Randy’s office to call the police.
17
“You look terrible,” Jay commented as he walked up the dock toward Carina.
My shirt hung over the lifelines of the boat, and I was lying on the foredeck on my back. The responding deputy wanted me to stay on deck until the detectives arrived. The morning sun was warming my skin as I dozed, waiting on more questions.
“Did you pull this one?” I asked, sitting up and looking at my friend.
Jay stood in a suit that, I guessed, he picked up at a consignment shop. The shoulders were just an inch or two wider than his frame, and the cuffs of his legs showed just a little too much ankle. He bemoaned the fact that detectives weren’t issued uniforms, which meant he was required that out of pocket expense.
“Even the brass didn’t have to pay for their uniforms,” he once remarked about the Corps.
“Just the first set,” I reminded him.
“Whatever,” he bemoaned.
“Then reenlist,” I told him. “The benefits abound.”
That was the last time he made such a comment.
“Yeah, seems we got here first.”
The sheriff’s marine patrol was the first to arrive. I wasn’t the one to call the law. Someone heard the shooting and dialed 911. When the deputies arrived, they found Goatee floating a few feet from where I left him. I didn’t know if the crack to his head killed him or he drowned. Given the way Pockface was shooting, it was possible he caught a bullet. Whatever the cause of death, the sheriff’s deputy had a lot of questions for me.
“Does this have to do with that Porter thing?” Jay asked.
“We didn’t get around to talking about it.”
Jay walked to the cockpit and climbed aboard. He didn’t ask for permission, but that was implicit. Had any of the other deputies tried that, I would have objected. Jay scooted past the shrouds and sat on the deck with me.
“What about the guy in Tampa yesterday?”
“Letson, right?”
He nodded. “Guy is a real pain in the ass. Damned Feds.”
“Did I get you in trouble?”
He waved off the question. “Worst thing they can do is fire me. Then I just move onboard with you.”
I scowled at him. “I’ve bunked with you before. It ain’t coming to that.”
“What’s actually going on here, Chase?” he questioned. “This is getting serious; you have guys dropping dead around you.”
“Is that a pun?”
Jay grinned. “Unintentional.”
“Yesterday, I was looking into the company that registered the boat that the guys who kidnapped Porter were driving. The mere mention of Porter’s name sent the goon into attack mode. They have a hard-on for this guy.”
“What about the floater?”
I shrugged. “There were two of them waiting on me this morning. They wanted to put me on one of the empty houseboats down there. I objected.”
“Smart of you. I doubt they had the nicest intentions.”
“Jay,” I started. “Someone needs to go to the Porters’ house. There’s a kid there. I’m sure he’s been reported missing. Name’s probably J.J. Someone tied him to a chair and sliced him up.”
“Shit,” he drawled in the Mississippi tongue he had a hard time hiding. “Who was he?”
“If he’s J.J., then he was Lily Porter’s boyfriend. Probably gave up where the Porters were hiding before he died.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, he muttered, “Where is the girl, Chase?”
My head turned up sideways to look at him. “I trust you, Jay,” I started, “but you’ll need to tell the authorities. We already suspect there might be a mole amongst the Feds.”
Jay nodded along. “She hasn’t come up yet,” he said. “Did the guy in the water say anything about her?”
“We never got that far along.”
“Chase,” Jay explained, “at some point, that question will have to be answered, though. When I have to know, you’ll need to tell me.”
My head bobbed in agreement.
“What killed the guy?”
“Not sure yet,” he responded. “His head was cracked open, but he has a bullet hole in him. Until they get a good look, we won’t know what did it.”
“How did it go down?” he asked.
“Like I said, they were waiting for me. The other guy had a gun. I think it was a .38. When the chance came, I grabbed the guy with the beard and used him as a shield. I might have cracked his head on the houseboat as we went into the water. I wasn’t overly careful with him.”
“We’ll run his name and see what pops up. You might want to be on guard.” He stared at me a second, then commented, “Although, you might want to get some rest.”
Suppressing a smile, I retorted, “As soon as the detective in charge clears me, I’ll head to the showers.”
“I’ll call you when I know more.” He pulled himself to his feet and left me staring across the marina as the crowd of crime scene techs worked the area around the Gibson houseboat. From the corner of my eye, I caught Missy and Randy walking down the dock. She paused as she passed Jay and spoke to him. The two of them exchanged a quick hug, and she introduced Randy to Jay. After some words were said, I watched Jay nod and smile before he pointed toward me.
Missy put her hand on Jay’s shoulder and left Randy to come toward Carina.
“Are you hurt?” she asked as she came up alongside the boat.
“No, I’m fine. Just tired of people trying to kill me.”
“Is this about the girl?” She stared at me while asking.
I didn’t answer.
“She’s just a little younger than Paige,” she observed.
I nodded in agreement.
“What did they want?”
“I’m guessing to know where Lily is hiding,” I commented.
“Does she know?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been gone since yesterday. I haven’t had a decent minute of sleep. I want to catch some sleep, and then I’ll talk to her.”
“What do they want with her?”
“Leverage against her dad,�
�� I guessed.
Missy crossed her arms. “She can’t stay here,” she stated flatly. “They’ll find her.”
I had to agree with her. I didn’t know what to do with her, though. My brain was foggy.
“How can I research a company?” I asked.
“You mean besides the internet?” she quipped with a thick layer of snark.
“I can just search for it?”
“Usually,” Missy explained, “most companies have business records. They are incorporated somewhere. The government wants to make sure they know where the pockets are to stick their thieving hands. Those records aren’t too hard to find. Mind you, that doesn’t mean you get the whole picture.”
“Can you look up this company?” I begged. “FC Investments.”
She rolled her eyes as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her fingers tapped out something on the screen. She waited.
“There’s not a lot. I’ll try to dig a little more. It looks like it’s based out of the Cayman Islands. There still has to be a paper trail if they have offices here.”
My body ached for sleep. “I think I’ll take a shower and catch a few hours of sleep,” I remarked. “I can dive a little deeper with a clear head.”
“Yeah, you smell like dead fish,” she joked as she walked away.
My eyes followed her, focusing on the round ass that she was accentuating in the slim skirt. Knowing Missy, she wasn’t intentionally flaunting. She thought she was dressing professionally. She knew she was attractive but being taken seriously as the hotel’s owner was important to her.
In retrospect, I considered that maybe her sensuality and beauty were inherent. The clothes she wore didn’t matter.
Whatever the reason, I enjoyed watching her.
I pulled myself to my feet and grabbed a clean towel and clothes before traipsing past the coroner carrying Goatee out on a stretcher.
I let the hot water wash away the last 24 hours. The crusted blood from my fight with Carl was washed clean after my dip in the salty water. Unfortunately, the seawater only made the prison grime feel grimier. A lot of that is in my head. Still, the hot water from the shower refreshed me.
FC Investments was behind all this. Finding who was behind the company might prove more difficult. Bureaucratic layers of protection provided by overseas corporation paperwork were areas I wasn’t comfortable delving through.
On the other hand, I considered, Rob was able to point me toward FC Investments through the cigarette boat that came back for Lily. Would he be able to trace the other vessels owned by FC Investments? The second cigarette boat in particular. They had to make landfall somewhere. The Coasties might be the right people to ask.
The water stopped as I twisted the knob. I dried quickly and dressed in some running shorts and an AC/DC t-shirt, peppered with holes and fading into obscurity.
Randy’s office was next to the shower. Peeking inside, I found the little cubby-hole vacant. He had a small desk, covered in work orders and a variety of notices. The back wall had an old Sports Illustrated calendar with Miss May still sporting a teal bikini on a Hawaiian coastline. Two file cabinets sat behind the desk, one of which, I knew, only contained tools. Randy wasn’t a paperwork type of guy. He had a few disorganized files, but most of the invoices and paperwork went up to the accounting office. Usually, Sharon, a short, brown-eyed woman with a sharp tongue, would come down and rifle through Randy’s desk to get whatever she needed to reconcile the books. I was pretty sure that Randy enjoyed the time that she came to his neck of the woods.
His phone was an old, grungy model that looked like it came out of a warehouse in 1992. I dialed Rob Isip’s number.
“Isip,” he answered.
“Rob,” I greeted him, “it’s Chase.”
“Hey, man.”
“That boat you ran for me the other day. It was registered to FC Investments,” I reminded him.
“Yeah,” he responded. I could hear road noise in the background.
“Is there a way to see if that company has any other vessels registered? And if so, where they might be berthed?”
“I thought this was just some random boat?” he questioned.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” I admitted.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s a long story,” I started, “the people at FC Investments don’t seem to be the best at answering questions. They have tried to kill me twice.”
“This sounds like a police thing. Why don’t you get Jay involved?”
“He is,” I explained, “and at some point, he’s going to have to know everything. Right now, there are a couple of balls in the air that I don’t want colliding.”
“Let me ask this,” he began, “how much trouble is this going to cause?”
“More than either one of us care for. Listen, Rob, I think the people behind this FC Investments are trying to grab a 14-year-old girl. The F.B.I. is involved, and I don’t know who they are gunning for.”
Rob sighed. “This does sound like a police matter.”
“The issue we have is that the girl’s father was kidnapped. The Feds think he’s a witness, and the girl is leverage. The people who took the dad had enough pull to get the RBDF to try and intervene.”
Rob was silent. He finally commented, “That’s some clout.”
“My worry.”
“You think they could have a mole somewhere else?”
“I have no evidence, but I want to make sure.”
“Alright, Chase. I’ll run them through the system when I get to the office. If you are going to keep it close to the chest, at least make sure Jay is in the loop.”
“Thanks, Rob.”
After hanging up, I shuffled back to Carina. There were only two deputies left on the dock, and I wondered if Jay left them to prevent any more troubles. I couldn’t care. If they wanted to come get me, I could be found burrowed in the sheets of my berth.
18
The Manta Club was slowing down from a busy lunch. The aftermath of a rush was spread throughout the room. The bar and several tables were still littered with dirty dishes that hadn’t been cleaned. Hunter was scurrying around behind the bar, closing out the last few customers trying to get back to the office. He grabbed dirty dishes and silverware as he moved around the bar.
Four and a half hours of sleep had given me an added boost. The lingering hangover feeling was still present and didn’t feel like it was going away. With some luck, a little food and a lot of caffeine might remedy that. There was one clean corner on the far side of the bar where I slipped onto the barstool and waited on Hunter to catch his breath.
Once I got some food, I wanted to check on Lily. Missy was correct earlier. It wasn’t safe for Lily to stay here. Even Jay suspected she was hiding in one of the rooms. If the next set of goons from FC Investments had any brains, they would suspect the same thing.
Best case, I considered, was they were already waiting for another chance to grab me. Worst case, they asked the right maid the right question and discovered Lily’s room.
My fingers massaged my temples, trying to push the ache away. Despite the personal attack, my mind continued to flash a freeze-frame shot of the poor kid in the Porters’ home. That would be Lily if they got a hold of her.
“Chase,” Hunter appeared in front of me, pulling me out of the macabre corner of my thoughts. He had beads of sweat on his forehead, accompanied by a satisfied grin.
“Good rush?”
“Yeah, crazy busy.” His youthful face looked frazzled. “No server, so just banging out the orders.”
“Sweet,” I congratulated him. “Probably made some good money.”
He nodded, asking, “Need a beer?”
“No, just an iced tea,” I responded. “And a tuna sandwich.”
“Heard there was an incident this morning,” he prodded. “Some guy got killed at the marina?”
“Couple of guys tried to jump me,” I stretched the truth.
“Big mistake on their part,” he muttered. “You okay, though?”
Nodding, I hoped he took it as a hint that I didn’t want to talk about it. Hunter was about 10 years younger than me, give or take a year. He always has this fascination with my history, as if he regrets his own inability to live outside of the box he’s been put in. He’s had a habit of pushing questions too far. Questions like have you ever killed someone are incredibly personal. Often those thoughts are the ones I try to suppress. Hunter doesn’t understand. He’s only lived the life that was expected of him.
People are like that, though. They trudge through the mundane paths of their existence, believing that there are no other options. I could never sail away alone, they tell me. That’s so brave, they praise my decisions. Joining the military seems like a last-ditch effort as if the rest of their life didn’t pan out, so it’s a surrender. Maybe it was. I was still a kid when I enlisted. I don’t remember what my reason was. Probably to escape my mother and the rest of Arkansas.
Hunter is still in the box. He thinks that bartending puts him in a different league than most people. Really, it’s a different box for him–something he made himself.
He returned a few seconds later with a glass of iced tea. Pulling the lemon wedge off the rim, I bit into it; the sour juice puckered my cheeks. Folding the rind, I dropped the yellow skin on the napkin next to my glass.
“Mr. Gordon,” a voice spoke to my left.
Agent Letson stood on the side of the bar. My head was tilted over my glass, so I turned away from him without a word.
“Seems you have been busy since I saw you last,” he remarked as he pulled out a stool next to me.
Twisting my head, I studied the agent carefully. “What can I do for you, Letson?”
“Do you know a James Jacob Watson?” he asked carefully.
I glanced at him. My finger traced along the condensation, dripping down the side of my glass.
“It’s an easy question,” he implored. “Do you know James Jacob Watson?”
It was an easy question. Even with my minimal deduction skills, I could guess James Jacob was also known as J.J.
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