by Landon Beach
Yesterday, the family plumber arrived just before lunch to unclog a toilet. All vehicles that visited Don Russo’s mansion were required to park inside the garage to be swept for listening devices, explosives, etc. before the occupant was allowed to enter the house. After the inspection, the plumber went inside and waited in a guest bathroom on the first floor, never touching the toilet but flushing it a few times to appear that he was working. Meanwhile, Ciro had the bags loaded inside the plumber’s van, and Stansie and Conrad climbed in and hid in the back with the bags. Half an hour later, the plumber left and, after making sure that he was not being followed, drove to a garage where the bags were transferred to a green pickup, which already had twenty-four bottles of Evian water loaded in the bed. Then, Stansie and Conrad took off in the truck for their destination: Sterling State Park. If all had gone well, Nico “River Nicky” Colombo would have picked them up along with the bags in his fifty-foot sloop, Apollonia’s Ashes, and sailed to his house on the island.
“Have we heard from Nicky?” he asked.
“The delivery was successful. They should be to the island by now,” Big Joey said. “It’ll take them some time to stuff the dry boxes and then hide them in the underwater cave.” He looked at his watch. “If the weather is good, they’ll probably do it tonight.”
“Will the dry boxes keep all that cash from getting wet?” He had asked this before but wanted reassurance once again. It was a legitimate concern. How embarrassing would it be to go through this elaborate plan just to find a bunch of mush inside the boxes in a few months when he thought the danger had passed? He had wanted to simply keep the money at River Nicky’s house, but his father had insisted upon this extra measure. Nicky’s house would eventually be searched if his adversaries wanted to find the cash badly enough. No one would know about the cave.
“Yes. They’re all good for one hundred feet. The cave opening is at around forty feet deep, and the deepest point in the cave is no more than sixty feet deep. No worries.”
“When should they be back to the park?”
“Tomorrow or the next day. You want me to call and make sure it’s tomorrow? I can have some of our people there waiting for them.”
Ciro thought. If Silvio’s disappearance is the start of the war, it’s better if they’re not around. But was Fabian starting a war? What if Silvio showed up in twenty minutes with his young woman on his arm and a belly full of wine? The Don was hanging onto life, and Papa Pete had paid a respectful and emotional visit. No, Fabian would not move on him while his father was still alive. “No,” he said. “We’re in no rush for them to come back, especially because no one knows where they are.”
Big Joey nodded.
✽✽✽
Ciro Russo sat in a leather chair by the fireplace in his father’s study. He had been in his father’s room for most of the night after the meeting with Big Joey, waiting for his father to take his last breath. However, the old Don had refused to go, and Ciro had retired to the study to rest. He guessed that he had dozed off around eleven but was now awakened by the grandfather clock striking two o’clock in the morning. Big Joey remained asleep, sprawled out on the leather couch and snoring like a grizzly bear. Before falling asleep, Ciro had noticed that Big Joey would stop breathing for periods while he slept. He remembered hearing that a former girlfriend had told the large driver and bodyguard that she thought he had sleep apnea and needed to get it checked out. After constant nagging, he had seen a sleep specialist, who recommended that Joey shave off his beard and wear an oxygen mask to sleep at night for the rest of his life. The Don had said that it might not be a bad idea, although he had never heard of anything like it before. Big Joey had shaved and tried it for a week. It was a disaster; he hated the mask and broke up with the girl. His trademark Dan Fouts beard was back within a few weeks, and he had kept it ever since.
The cell phone on the chair’s armrest beeped, and Ciro looked at the text message.
Done and safe.
It was from the phone he had given Stansie and Conrad. The money was now hidden in the cave. Good. He thought about waking Big Joey but decided that he could tell him in the morning. Ciro stood up and stretched. Time to head up to bed. He rubbed his eyes and then suddenly shivered. Cool air from the overhead vent was blowing directly on his head. He grabbed a blanket from the back of his leather chair and walked over to the couch, where he covered up as much of Big Joey as the blanket would allow.
The door to the library opened, and his father’s nurse entered. Suspicious that there had been no knock, Ciro went to speak.
But before he could get a word out, the nurse said, “Your father is gone.”
12
Sterling State Park, Michigan
Present Day
Brad Cranston pulled Rusty along with the trailer carrying Larry’s twenty-five-foot Stingray into a camping lot normally reserved for an RV. It was almost midnight, four hours since he had picked up his dive gear at the hardware store in Hampstead, and he lowered his windows, hearing the sound of gravel popping as the tires rolled until the truck and boat were centered in the lot. A light breeze brought in the wonderful smell of campfires, which made him wonder what delicious things had been cooked above or directly in their flames earlier that night—hot dogs, bratwurst, baked beans with bacon, smores… He turned off his headlights, and the area around his lot came into focus. There was a soft glow emanating from inside the RV in the lot to his right; perhaps, someone inside was lost in an unputdownable summer read, or it could be that a couple was making love by candlelight and feeling a connection they hadn’t felt in years because of the pace of life at home, or maybe someone just forgot to turn off a light. To his left, he saw a litter of warm orange flickers from campfires that were attempting to close their eyes for the night. All around, the patches of woods were dark and seemingly impenetrable. He heard a burst of laughter and, like all sounds human beings hear in the darkness, wanted to know what had caused the noise. A joke? Someone falling over after one-too-many cold ones? At that precise moment, Brad realized that he could use some humor, but then he remembered why, and it brought him out of his survey of the campsite. He rolled up the windows and turned Rusty off.
He’d touched base with Allison Shannon when he arrived at the park ten minutes ago, and she was on her way to meet him—nothing immediate to fill him in on, but she’d tell him what she did have when they met. In fact, right before he called her, he saw that he had missed a call and voicemail from her. Why it hadn’t shown up earlier on his phone, he didn’t know—just another failure of the machine that was supposed to take communication to a whole new level.
He got out of the truck and stretched. As he reached his fingertips toward his toes, he became aware of his bladder. Standing up, he located the building that housed the showers and restroom—the green glow from the building’s lights peeking through a less-dense bunch of trees. He locked the truck and headed out.
As he hiked down the path that split two patches of woods, he felt close to Conrad. His brother had been here and presumably hidden a cell phone in the building he was heading toward. The creative part of his mind that allowed him to illustrate book covers had been burning on the entire trip down. What had Conrad gotten into? He had been at this park, yes. But where did his brother live? A twig snapped underneath his sandals, and he remembered the failed thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. Why had Conrad missed the hike? And did that disappearance have anything to do with this one?
He reached the building’s entrance and opened the door for the men’s restroom. He was both thrown off and impressed with the inside. The place was clean and well-lit, not your usual campground restroom. By curiosity or falling prey to his creative side and the romance of playing detective, he went down to the last stall, closed the door behind him, and then opened the tank cover. Nothing but rust-colored water inside. What had Conrad been thinking? He went to put the ceramic tank lid back on, but his right hand slipped and the tank cover hit the front edge wit
h a clang. He caught it before it fell to the floor and was in the process of putting it back on when he heard a man’s voice from the adjacent stall.
“Just what do you think yer doin’ in there?”
Brad set the tank top back on and then crouched down to see underneath the side of the stall. There were a pair of worn sneakers pointed away from the stall with a pair of jeans pulled down and resting on them.
“Hey! You tryin’ to look at me?” the voice shouted. Then, the man lowered his hand and made a fist. “What are you up to?”
Brad immediately stood, cleared his throat, and said, “Ah, nothing.”
“Sure sounds like somethin’,” the man said. “Gonna report you.”
Brad left the stall and exited the restroom door just as he heard the toilet flush from the stall that had been next to him.
Outside, he jogged down the path and, when he saw no one coming in either direction, unzipped his pants and urinated. Going to the bathroom was not supposed to be this complicated, but, upon further examination, the root cause traced back to one person, the same person of his family’s consternation: Conrad Cranston. As his stream started to slow, he said aloud, “Where in the hell are you?”
Five minutes later, he was grabbing a heavy-duty yellow extension cord from the boat when he heard tires rolling over his lot’s gravel drive. A pair of lemon-colored beams illuminated him from behind, making the white hull of the Stingray glow like a ghost in the middle of a pitch-black night.
He turned around.
13
Sterling State Park, Michigan
Present Day
Allison Shannon pulled her Ford Explorer into the lone lot that had a trailered boat behind a truck. A man using a flashlight was pulling a yellow extension cord out from an open compartment in the boat’s stern. The name Reminiscing was spelled in large black letters across the transom. She pulled in behind the boat, and the man looked back at her as she turned off the lights and engine.
The night air felt good as she emerged from the vehicle, and the smell of burning wood was a welcome change from the cinnamon-scented potpourri fixture hanging from her rearview mirror in the Explorer. “Brad Cranston?” she asked, closing the door.
“Hi,” Brad said. “Allison Shannon?”
She walked toward him, and they shook hands. “What are you up to?”
He aimed his light at the black RV pedestal and then at a water spigot nearby. “Hooking up some electricity and water for the boat. My home for the evening.”
She watched as he plugged the power cord into the pedestal’s thirty-amp receptacle. He then jogged back to the stern and returned with a hose that he attached to the spigot.
“Follow me,” he said. “Bring your stuff.”
She opened the door to her vehicle and removed a large bag that had her laptop, notebook, and the manilla envelope that held the three pictures. She also had a can of mace in her jeans’ front pocket in case this guy tried anything. Inside the bag was also her Glock 22, hidden in a zippered case that looked like a toiletries bag.
Allison put the bag on her shoulder and closed her car door.
Brad hopped up on the boat’s swim platform and then helped her onboard. He was not who she had expected. Like her, he was trim, toned…athletic. Handsome might be another word she would use to describe him to friends. He wasn’t gorgeous, but he was someone who moved with a purpose. She liked that.
They stood in the cockpit, and he said, “I’ll be right back.”
She watched as he disappeared into the boat’s cabin. Soon, she heard the sound of switches clicking, and then the lights came on below.
“All right,” he said. “C’mon down.”
She descended the companionway steps and felt cool air entering the compartment. Brad motioned to the port bench, and she slid in behind a small table. On the galley’s countertop, she saw a bottle of red wine, a cooler, and a bag of groceries. On the bunk to her left was a backpack.
He walked to the galley’s sink and said, “Okay, we’ve got electricity. So, the air conditioning is on. The batteries should be charging, so we’ll have hot water soon...as long as we have—”
She wasn’t sure if he was reporting this to her or just talking out loud to himself, but either way, he kept right on going.
A turn of the nozzle at the sink was followed by a steady stream of water. “Water’s working.” He shut the water off. “Going to check the head,” he stated as he opened a hatch, exposing a small sink and commode next to it. He moved inside the room, blocking her view of the sink.
The sound of running water was followed by a flush of the commode. “Head’s up and running.” She heard the water stop flowing, followed by, “Good.”
Brad closed the hatch and smiled at her. “Thanks for waiting. Wanted to make sure everything was working before I spent the night on her.”
“No problem. You work fast,” she said.
He sat down across the table from her. “Sorry again for not returning your call. Don’t know what happened with my phone.”
She waved it off as fine. He was polite, and she liked that.
“I’m excited to see the pictures and hear what you’ve got so far,” he said.
For the next twenty minutes, they filled each other in on what they knew. She started out by asking him the same questions as before to check for consistency. His answers were the same and delivered in a thorough yet not lengthy way, which she found encouraging. She had heard of elaborate schemes devised by former criminals, con men, and other horrible human beings to trap people like herself and then do unspeakable things to them. It was one of the first lessons she had learned when joining the agency: Don’t trust anyone, especially your client and especially when you first meet them. So far, Brad was coming across as genuine. She didn’t fully trust him yet, but his credentials had checked out; Larissa had filled her in on his background as an illustrator, and he had just made a six-hour drive trailering a boat. Those facts had her leaning against the possibility that he was a psychopath, but one could never be sure. What gave her the most comfort was the news Mike had delivered about the phone. If Mike couldn’t trace the calls right off the bat, then chances were something was going on that someone did not want others to know about. And, Brad did seem concerned.
After her questions had been answered, he didn’t have much to offer other than he had successfully been able to acquire some dive gear, which she was in no hurry to have him use. She had been able to locate her gear—which included an extra BCD, regulator, and weight belt for him—and had it loaded up along with four fully topped-off tanks in the back of her Explorer, but she hadn’t told him any of this yet. She had told him more about the phone, though. The calls, text message, and, again, the pictures.
After further explaining that her friend Mike was working on tracking down the numbers that Conrad had contacted, she showed him the printouts of the photographs.
“Definitely Conrad,” he said. He concentrated on them for a minute more and slid them back across the table to her. “No idea who he’s with. She’s beautiful. But…”
“But what?” she asked.
“He just looks so good and happy.” He pulled one of the pictures back to him. “Look at his hair. Clean. And his tan and muscle definition. His arms have always been huge, but check out his chest and shoulders. He hasn’t looked this good since the summer I told you about when we basically went scuba diving every day. Reminds me—were you successful locating your gear?”
Allison pointed at the woman next to Conrad in the picture. “What about her?”
“What does she have to do with the gear?” Brad said.
Fine. He’s stubborn. “I’ve got everything we need,” she said.
He nodded.
“Now, what about her?”
He focused on the picture again. “Well, either she,” he said, pointing at the woman, “or the person taking this picture has been taking care of him.”
“Are you sure it’s not the othe
r way around?”
He scoffed. “No way. He can’t even take care of himself.”
She had no reason to doubt him but decided to push for a little bit more information about the boat and the woman. “And you’ve never seen her or this sailboat before?”
“No,” Brad said.
“Sure?” she asked.
“Sure,” Brad said. “But I think we have to assume that the woman is the ‘she’ that Conrad was referring to in the message. But who would they be running from? And why were they separated when he made this last-ditch phone call?”
He seemed genuine, and she also appreciated that he was attentive and focused on the case. The last thing she wanted was some deadbeat who had the attitude of ‘Just solve the damn case already. That’s what I’m payin’ ya for, and I ain’t doin’ shit to help either.’ She had now ruled Brad out of that category. “All good questions,” she said. “We don’t have any answers, but I think I found out where this picture was taken. It could also be the place he thought they were going to take him.” Her use of ‘we’ was calculated. If he stayed interested, then she would consider them more of a team in this. If he shut down, then it would be a sign that something with the whole thing could be rotten and would be more guarded with him.