As for myself, I was on the mend and improving every day. My mother and Cara had both offered me a place to stay. I told them I wanted to move back into my old apartment. I acted a bit hypocritically in this regard. I tried to argue with Avalon Walnut Creek that there was no threat and I should be allowed to move back in. In turn, I told my mother and Cara it was just too dangerous for me to move in with them. I tried to have it both ways.
Avalon Walnut Creek wasn’t having it, telling me “it wouldn’t be conducive to a friendly atmosphere” if I remained. Whatever the fuck that meant.
It’s like I was a victim all over again. I’d been charged with a murder I didn’t commit and now I was being uprooted because someone had tried to kill me. I know life isn’t fair, but this was beyond the pale.
I found a singular apartment a few blocks from Avalon Walnut Creek. I signed a six-month lease and hired a moving company to move everything for me. My shoulder was healing, but I still had a very limited range of motion, and I couldn’t lift anything over about twenty pounds. I’m sure Avalon Walnut Creek was plenty happy not to have me on site when my furniture was moved.
Both my mother and Cara continued to worry that the man who tried to kill me might try again. I wasn’t that worried. When you have information that the police don’t have yet, you are a threat, and thus a target. Once you go to the police, there really is no point in killing you. It’s not like I could testify to any firsthand evidence I had. Just suspicions. Of which I had many.
So I settled back into day-to-day life. I was still on meds for the shoulder, but they got less and less powerful. I hated the groggy feeling the powerful ones gave me and I told my doctors I preferred dealing with a little pain, which continued to subside.
Of everything going on, what drew my utmost ire was that Charles Zane had my father killed. I, like the FBI, felt sure what the subordinate said on their wiretap was the truth. Just because they couldn’t prove it didn’t change anything.
I wanted the man dead. Call it an eye for an eye or vigilante justice, but if I saw Charles Zane on the street, I’d have bludgeoned him to death. And that was just for my father. The fact he’d tried to have me killed was almost secondary.
And it was becoming all consuming.
So while I recovered, the case was never far from my mind. Some of the loose threads had been tied together. Maybe not in a court of law, but by what Gary Rodgers had been able to find out.
Griff Bauer was low on the food chain, but appeared to have worked for Charles Zane. Likely as a drug dealer. They assumed Bauer was commissioned to carry out the murder and torture of Aubrey Durban and James Neil after they saw the young woman running away. When Bauer got into a car accident after finishing the job and was taken to the hospital, he became a liability. And was killed the next morning. When Bauer tortured Aubrey and James, he likely found out that Aubrey had told Tricia Knox about what they had seen. However, Tricia Knox was on vacation at the time, so she wasn’t killed until several days later. And finally, when they saw me poking around and then following Zane home from the horse races, I became a liability and they tried to take me out.
That covered all of the murders and attempted murders. Except for one. My father’s.
All I had to connect him was the note he’d written about Mason Anderson. Could my father have gone to the Andersons’ and seen something he wasn’t supposed to? Possible. Could my father have brought up the potential child abuse to Mason Anderson, who relayed it to his father and they decided to do something? Also possible, but I thought unlikely.
I understood most of the case, but my father’s involvement remained the missing link. And one more question was of consequential importance as well. What had the young woman been running from? Agent Moore didn’t think Zane trafficked women, but what did that mean? It’s not like the agent had a good track record with me after nothing happened to my would-be killer.
Whatever happened, Charles Zane and Doug Anderson were good at covering their tracks. Gary Rodgers held the opinion that once I was admitted to the hospital, they started scrubbing their computers and cleaning their homes of any potential incriminating evidence. They knew I’d share my suspicions with the police and warrants would likely be procured.
It made sense. How else could the FBI find nothing?
It was frustrating beyond words.
One thing that survived my attempted murder was the collage/storyboard I’d had in my room. The wannabe killer likely never made it to the room, waiting closer to my front door. Otherwise he probably would have torn it all down, considering its many references to Charles Zane.
I asked the movers to keep the storyboard in mint condition. And they did. Once I received it, I put it up in my new apartment. On the wall, directly across from my bed, so I’d see it every night as I went to sleep.
An attempt on my life had done nothing to stop me from wanting to find out the whole truth. I no longer trusted the FBI or my local law enforcement. All they had gotten me was a bullshit murder charge and my hopes up that they’d arrest Charles Zane. Which hadn’t happened.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but it was time to take things into my own hands.
Once again.
29.
“A cockroach has fucking nothing on you,” Paddy Roark said.
I took it as a compliment. And he said it with a glint in his eye, as if, after all I’d been through, I now had his respect.
Roark had whisked me into the back office as soon as he’d seen me at Boyle’s Grocery Store again. I had gotten the big Transformer-looking instrument off of my shoulder a few days before. I still had a sleek, padded brace that hid under my clothes, but for the most part I looked normal. The gunshot to my flank had healed nicely, despite the huge scar it left in its wake. So far, only Cara had the “pleasure” of seeing it.
“You’ve got a soft spot for me,” I said to Roark.
His smile gave him away.
“People who shake the tree of Charles Zane usually don’t last this long.”
“My father was one of those who didn’t last,” I said.
I filled Paddy Roark in on what Agent Moore had told me.
I didn’t have many other people to talk to. My mother didn’t want to hear about my father. She preferred to think he died in a mugging. I intentionally left Cara in the dark for her own peace of mind. The FBI was done with me and even though I had accepted Ray Kintner’s apology, I could never trust him again.
So here I was talking to Paddy Roark, a criminal like Charles Zane. No, he wasn’t on the same level as Zane, but he wasn’t a saint either. But I decided to befriend him. Like the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
That’s how I viewed Paddy Roark, and by extension, Dennis McCarthy.
Plus, and I know this may sound weird, I had a certain camaraderie with Roark and McCarthy. I trusted them. In the brief time I’d spent with both, I felt a mutual respect. And they worked in the gambling business, not the drug business. As I said, not saints, but nothing approaching the evil of Charles Zane.
So I dealt with them.
“I’m sorry about your father. I really am. But what do you think we can do?” Paddy Roark asked.
“You can tell me where Zane is vulnerable.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“An old ally who wants revenge. An ex-wife. A family member of someone he killed. I’m ready to shake the tree harder than it’s already been shook.”
Paddy Roark stroked his non-existent goatee. I guessed that meant he was thinking.
“Or you could go to more extreme measures.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Can you come back tomorrow?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got an idea, but I have to clear it with the boss man.”
“I’ll be here,” I said.
I returned the next day, Tuesday. As had become protocol, I was escorted to the back of Boyle’s by Paddy Roark. This tim
e, when we got back to his little office there a third man waited for us. Dennis McCarthy.
I took a seat. As did Roark. Dennis McCarthy remained standing.
“Paddy informed me that Charles Zane killed your father and law enforcement are doing nothing about it.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“And you want to do something yourself?”
“Right again.”
“I think we might be willing to help you out. But, and I shouldn’t have to say this, if you ever went to law enforcement, we’d never deal with you again. And deny everything.”
“I would never. I’m done with them.”
“That’s what I figured. Just making sure.”
No one said anything for ten seconds.
“So what have you got?” I finally asked.
“Have you heard of the Cliff House?”
“Yeah, the restaurant on the water out by Ocean Beach.”
“Correct. Well, Charles Zane eats there every Friday for lunch. And we know one of the valets. I don’t think our friend would be above putting a recording device in Mr. Zane’s car.”
I hadn’t expected something so big. A potential game changer.
“How does this work?” I asked.
“We’ll give you a cell phone and stream the audio through that.”
“This is more than I ever expected,” I said.
“Just so you know, if he finds out about this, your two little bullet wounds will feel like a Swedish massage.”
My mind wandered to Charles Zane feeding his employee’s body parts to the sharks.
And yet, I said, “I’m in.”
“Alright, I’ll talk to my guy. Come by Friday afternoon and I’ll let you know if it was a success.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Call me Dennis, since we’re officially friends now. But don’t be thanking me. We may come to regret this. All of us. I told you that Charles Zane used to work for me, right?”
“He did,” I said, nodding to Roark.
“Well, he’s the type of guy who wanted to do the collections. He enjoyed roughing people up if it ever came to that. Me, I’m a businessman at heart. I hated that aspect. But Zane enjoyed that shit. I think he really would have broken kneecaps if he could have. He was too much of a wild card, and that’s why we let him go. And he went off on his own.”
“From what I’ve gathered, he’s used your business playbook. Surrounding himself with people he trusts, having subordinates way down the totem pole.”
Dennis McCarthy stared at me and I knew I had crossed a line.
“Maybe it’s better we don’t discuss things of this nature. You got that, Quint?”
“I’m sorry. Of course not,” I said.
“Just be vigilant. You are fully on Zane’s radar and he’d like nothing more than to succeed in killing you this time.”
His warning sat there in the air.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you Friday,” I said, not sure what else to say.
“See you then, Quint. Not a word to anyone.”
“Of course not.”
I shook their hands and walked out of Boyle’s Grocery Store.
The next three days sailed by. I had my daily phone calls with my mother, which had become less to talk and more for her to make sure I was unharmed. And on Wednesday night, Cara came over and we Netflix’d and Chilled. And chilled. And chilled.
If Cara had any misgivings about hanging out with me, she didn’t express them.
Friday afternoon came and I drove into the city. My new place was only three blocks from a BART station, but I’d become somewhat of a local celebrity these days, and I didn’t like the attention. I preferred to drive myself than deal with the potential “fans” that might see me on BART.
I made my way into Boyle’s for the third time in five days, heading right toward the back. There were cameras littered throughout the store and Paddy Roark must have seen me walk in, because he appeared almost immediately. He didn’t have to say a word and I followed him to the office where I was now a regular.
This time, Dennis McCarthy was seated and I joined him. Paddy Roark took the chair behind the desk, making him look like the boss. But that was Dennis McCarthy’s position no matter what seat he was in.
“Our friend did what we asked of him,” he said, getting right to the point.
“That’s great news,” I said.
“Yeah.” McCarthy sighed, signaling he wasn’t so sure.
“We’ve gotten you a burner cell phone,” Paddy Roark said. “Never use this phone for anything else.”
“I won’t.”
He handed me a beat-up iPhone. “You see here on the main screen where it says CZaudio?”
“I do.”
“When you click on that, you’ll hear the audio from Charles Zane’s car.”
“Wow, you guys made that simple.”
“We’ve got some young people to aid us in technical support when necessary,” McCarthy said.
“Let’s see if we hear anything.” Paddy Roark pressed the CZaudio button.
No sound came from the phone.
“He’s not in his car right now,” Roark said. “Even if he’s driving, but not talking, you’d still hear the noise of the car moving.”
“I understand,” I said, thinking the less I spoke the better.
They had gone out on a limb for me, surely for their own selfish incentives as well, and I didn’t want to give them any reasons to reconsider the arrangement.
“This is an iPhone 7, so go get a charger if you don’t have one. Wouldn’t want you to run out of juice when listening to something important.”
“I’ll get one today.”
Dennis McCarthy stood up. “And this is where we say goodbye, Quint. We feel for all you’ve been through and have decided to help, but we don’t need you coming around all the time. You just never know if Charles Zane is watching.”
“I’m grateful for all you’ve done,” I said.
“We hope this helps you get what you’re looking for. Remember, no cops and no friends. This is just for you. It’s not like it would be admissible in court.”
“After all that’s happened, I don’t put much stock in cops or courts.”
Roark and McCarthy smiled at me.
“Thank you, guys. For everything.”
“We have our personal reasons for wanting to see Charles Zane go down. But you’re welcome,” Dennis McCarthy said.
“Hopefully my body isn’t turned into shark food,” I said, hoping to lighten the moment.
It didn’t work. They both stared at me like I had a death wish.
Maybe I did.
30.
As I listened to the audio from Charles Zane’s car, which produced nothing fruitful over the first few days, I thought about my father often. All the great teaching moments he’d given me over the course of my life. And his.
One stood out.
In 1990 I was ten years old, playing for a traveling soccer team. I had been the best player on my local team, but I was average, at best, on this new team that took all the best players from in and around Seattle.
I didn’t get much playing time and it affected my attitude. I was being a snot, as my mother used to say. Complaining. Sulking. Focusing on the negative.
At the time, my favorite sports team in Seattle was the SuperSonics, the local NBA team. They had just drafted Gary Payton, who everyone immediately knew was going to be a generational player. I watched the Sonics every night and Payton quickly became my favorite.
He grew up in Oakland and was its hometown hero. Little did I know at the time, my life would eventually lead there.
My father decided to ask a friend for a favor. One of the assistant coaches for the SuperSonics had a son in my father’s class and the two men had become friendly. One day, my father brought up to him that I wasn’t handing my soccer experience very well and asked if there was any chance he could introduce me to one of the Sonics.
A week later, my father surprised me and said we were going to the SuperSonics game that night. We left an hour and half before the game started and I couldn’t understand why we’d gotten such an early start.
I soon found out.
As the players warmed up for the upcoming game, my father walked me down to the court. He saw his friend, the assistant coach, who brought Gary Payton—GARY PAYTON!—over to meet me.
“Hi, Quint!”
“Hi, Mr. Payton,” I said, dazzled by the moment.
“I heard you’re having a tough time with your traveling team. I’m going to tell you about a guy who went to college at Oregon State. He got bypassed by all the big teams. North Carolina didn’t come calling. Or Kentucky. Or Indiana. So he had to go to a little small school and work his butt off. But he didn’t give up. He kept practicing and trying harder than the other guys. Because he knew in the end, his work ethic would pay off and he’d be better than those guys at the big schools. And it has. That little guy was me and now, and I’m not trying to be cocky, I’m one of the best players in the NBA. So keep working hard, Quint. Don’t worry if you’re not getting the playing time. You’ll surpass them all if you work hard!”
And then he leaned in and gave me a hug.
I wish I’d seen my face in that moment. It might have been the most exciting, unforeseen moment of my whole life to that point.
“Thanks, Mr. Payton,” I said.
“You’re welcome. But my name is Gary,” he said and smiled as he walked back to the court to warm up.
I didn’t know in the moment just how much my father had in making this happen. But it changed my attitude for the whole season. It’s still one of my favorite memories.
And no, I didn’t become some great soccer player, but that’s not the point of the story. It’s to show just how great a man my father was.
Revenge at Sea: (Quint Adler Book 1) Page 19