MIDNIGHT QUEST: A Short 'Men of Midnight' Novel

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Sometimes Jacko had had this weird feeling that Pendleton knew who his old man was. Jacko had nothing to base that feeling on, really. Just an odd look and a word or two. But Pendleton had never come out with it, and now, even if he’d known, he probably couldn’t remember. Jacko had never pressed it. If Pendleton didn’t want to tell him, it was probably bad news.

  There was just no way to track his dad down and it was probably better that way. Who knew who he was? Some druggie asshole drifter who’d passed through town at a moment when his mom could barely remember to eat let alone take care of birth control. She’d had her tubes tied after giving birth to him.

  At least part of his heritage wasn’t druggie asshole, if you didn’t count his mom. Which he didn’t. Her getting hooked was because she’d had undiagnosed ADD and his grandparents had been too naïve to recognize the signs. So she’d fallen into the ugly black hole of addiction, a place too horrible for life, like an airless, sunless planet.

  But her side of the family was normal. His kid wasn’t going to be born with two heads and fangs. And of course there was Lauren, who was perfect, and was giving their baby her genes, too.

  Their baby. Jesus, he was having a kid. It finally settled inside him, the full weight of this. He’d been too freaked to grasp it, hold it, look at it. He did so now, this idea that had been too hot to handle, too fucking scary to deal with.

  A baby.

  A tiny little defenseless creature who would depend on them for everything. And they’d do it. Fuck yeah. He and Lauren would do it. They’d take this little thing and love it and protect it and watch it grow into a strong adult, and they’d be with the kid every step of the way.

  Lauren’s parents hadn’t been too hot either. Her father had been weak and had dilapidated the family money before kicking the bucket and her mom had then married a Florida mobster. Lauren hadn’t been loved and protected—though there’d been plenty of money—and she’d done okay. Lauren was the finest woman he’d ever met and ASI was lousy with fine women. Neither he nor Lauren had had good parenting and they’d turned out all right. In Lauren’s case, more than all right.

  So they could do this.

  Yeah. Oh yeah.

  Get back to Lauren, Jacko thought, the fastest route possible. The digging was over. He’d found out some good things, and he was ready to go back home. He’d get some flak from Metal and Joe and Jack, and his bosses would look at him squint-eyed, the way they’d done in the military when you didn’t complete your run in the allotted time. Of course, in civilian life they couldn’t command him to drop to the grinder and pump out 150.

  They’d find a way to make him pay. Overtime, maybe. That was fine. Jacko knew there would be a price. Nothing came free. He could do overtime, no question.

  So where the fuck was the sheriff? Jacko didn’t need him. Felicity could run Pendleton down in under a minute. He’d give the sheriff another five minutes, then he was gone and the hell with him.

  But the sheriff came back in two minutes, shaking his head, looking sorry. “Mr. Jackman,” he said, walking through the door into his office. “I do apologize. I can’t find anyone who knows where Pendleton’s rest home is. Maybe if you wouldn’t mind staying till after lunch, I can ask Charlie when she comes in for the afternoon shift. She’s not answering her cell.”

  He was frowning.

  “No problem,” Jacko said easily, rising. It was all suddenly too much. Wasting time in this dusty office in a backwater town where he’d been miserably unhappy. There was nothing for him here and he was sorry he’d come. He couldn’t wait to escape, to get back to Lauren. “But I need to get going. ”

  The sheriff cocked his head. “Say, you never did say where you live now. If you have a card on you, I’ll call when I get the name of the facility. Be a pleasure to do my predecessor a solid.”

  “I’m out of business cards,” Jacko lied. He didn’t want to leave any ties behind. He was done with Cross and would never come back. He’d find out what he needed to know his own way. “So, thanks for your help.” He stuck out his hand.

  “Sorry to see you go.” The sheriff took it almost reluctantly. “Didn’t even get a chance to offer coffee. Ours isn’t bad. Crew took up a collection and we got ourselves a fancy coffeemaker.”

  “Another time.” Meaning never. Jacko gave a brief smile and walked out the door. He paused on the steps leaving the sheriff’s office and looked up and down the street. Some of the buildings he remembered from the bad old days, some were new but already in disrepair. Nothing here held any good memories for him. This was a place from a long-ago past that had nothing to do with him now.

  He made his way down the steps, got into his SUV and headed north, happy to be leaving Cross behind him forever.

  Fuck!

  Stu Constable opened up his desk drawer and pulled out an old photo. It had been handed to him by his predecessor and Constable had been holding on to it for close to ten years.

  Five hundred grand. He was looking at a face that represented five hundred grand. Five hundred thousand dollars was enough to pay his debts, get him out of this shithole and provide a stake in a new business.

  He stared at the photo of the man in the photo. Tough-looking guy, cold eyes. He had long graying sideburns and a full head of dark hair. Wearing an ’80s-style shirt with long pointy collars. But none of that was important. What was important was that he looked exactly like the man who’d just been in Constable’s office.

  The man in the photo had darker skin but that might be an effect of a photo that was over thirty years old. He also had pale eyes. Constable couldn’t tell if the eyes were pale blue or gray. He had hair and the guy who’d just left had a shaved head. Other than that, he looked exactly like the man who’d just been in his office, Jackman. The resemblance was uncanny.

  He punched in a number.

  “Sì?” A male Hispanic voice.

  “Hey,” Constable said. Good, the number was still valid. “This is Stuart Constable in Cross, Texas. That guy you want, Dante Jimenez? You still want him, don’t you?”

  He started sweating. A lot was riding on this. Five hundred thousand dollars would turn his life right around. Maybe convince his wife to stay with him. She was sick of being a sheriff’s wife in a dump of a town. 500K would be a stake in a new life. He could buy half his brother-in-law’s thriving diving equipment business in Galveston. Get out of this place, finally. Fuck the half-assed cop pension.

  “Yeah,” the guttural voice answered. “We still want him. Price has gone down, though. Two hundred grand.”

  Constable slumped in his chair. Fuck! He waited a second to make sure his voice was cool and calm. Two hundred grand was still a lot of money.

  “I think I have a lead.”

  “You think you have a lead?” the voice asked sharply.

  Shit! He couldn’t lose this!

  “No, no! I have a lead. A good one.” Constable wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

  “Stay at this number,” the voice said and disconnected.

  Constable listened to empty air then thumbed his cell off. Stay at this number. For how long, dammit?

  He heaved a sigh. Pointless fooling himself. He’d sit in this fucking broken down chair until he starved and cobwebs covered his body. And it wasn’t like he had something else to do. Cross was dead, day and night. Even the faintest possibility of making some real money—that was enough to keep him where he was.

  An hour later, his cell rang. Unknown number. Okay. Maybe his request was making its way up through the ranks. Maybe he was going to talk to Gustavo Villalongo himself. No, wait. He’d died in prison years back.

  “Talk.” A different voice. Coarse and raspy. A smoker’s voice.

  “I have a photo to send. I’ll need an email.”

  “A photo? What the fuck am I going to do with a photo?”

  Sweat broke out across Constable’s forehead. “You’ll understand when you see it. But I need half the money before I send it.”
<
br />   Silence. “Do you know who this is?”

  “Ah—” Now sweat was trickling down his back. “Ca-Carlos Villalongo.” The heir to the Villalongo cartel. It had been the most powerful cartel along the Mexican border, operating both in the States and in Mexico. Until a DEA undercover agent had risen through the ranks to become Gustavo Villalongo’s right-hand man and then smashed the cartel. The old man had been sent to American prison. The Villalongo cartel never recovered and Carlos proved to be a weak leader. But cruel, crueler even than Los Zetas south of the border.

  His hatred of the DEA agent who’d put his father in prison was legendary.

  Constable gathered his courage. This was his one shot out of his life. Another would never come his way again. “Send me half the money and I will send a photo. If you’re interested, then I’ll tell you how to track the man in that photo.”

  “Do you know what will happen to you if you are tricking me?” Carlos Villalongo asked, his voice full of quiet menace.

  A minor skirmish with a rising cartel near Laredo had finished with a series of heads on pikes lining a country road. The entire leadership of the cartel. And their women and children lay in a pit, bullets to the backs of their heads having put an end to their misery.

  Constable swallowed, tried to steady his voice. “I understand full well. But you will not be disappointed.”

  “Bueno. Write down this address.” He dictated a Gmail address. “I will wire the money. Stay at this number.”

  Both of them knew that was the only money Constable would see. But that was okay. If he got paid the full price, and for some reason the tracker he’d put on Jackman’s vehicle came loose and they lost him or they were unable to take this Jackman guy down —and he looked really tough and perfectly capable of handling himself—then they’d come back to him and take their frustrations out on his hide.

  The tracker on the vehicle was the only thing Constable could give. His fucking video cameras didn’t work. Hadn’t worked in years and the county was too cheap to replace them. Luckily, he’d gotten his secretary to take photos with her cell phone of Jackman’s face as he was getting into his vehicle. He tracked down the vehicle tags. They were Oregon license plates but were registered to some company headquartered in Delaware. So God only knew where that SUV was going.

  If he only got half the reward money and they botched the grab and snatch, they’d consider it a fair deal. At least they wouldn’t come after him to dismember him and scatter his parts all over the county.

  So okay.

  “Now give me your bank info.”

  Constable gave it to him.

  God. Fifteen years ago, when the sheriff who had taken over from Pendleton handed him the keys of the sheriff’s office and told him about how Gustavo Villalongo had been taken down by a DEA special agent, he’d also told him how Villalongo had a reward on the agent’s head. A big one.

  “Write down this number,” the sheriff had told Constable, “memorize it, then burn it. And get yourself a bank account outta the country. In one a’ them tax havens, where no one can get to your money. Because if you come across any info about where that agent went to, you’re gonna rake it in. Man, Villalongo’s got a hard-on for this guy, and he’ll have it till he goes to his grave.”

  So Constable had memorized the number, burned the piece of paper and opened an account in the Caymans. Hadn’t been easy, no sir. Rich guys did it all the time but for someone like him, he’d had to travel there and deposit five thousand dollars, just to open a fucking account. It burned him, but now look. He was ready. The brass ring had fallen right into his hands.

  The old sheriff had made him promise he’d get a percentage of the take if he cashed in, but Constable reckoned he’d keep the whole thing. No reason to share.

  In the movies, bank transfers were instant. On the screen was the bank account, a big line arcing over to it, numbers rolling. Insta-money.

  Nope. The freaking thing had been inactive so long, when he finally found his password he discovered it’d been deactivated. So he tried online and finally had to call the frigging bank. And got frigging voice mail.

  When he finally saw his bank statement he just stared at the numbers. One hundred grand. Plus the five grand he’d deposited years ago.

  Five minutes later he sent the tracking coordinates.

  Laredo, Texas

  Carlos Villalongo picked up the photograph that had been emailed to him, together with coordinates from the tracker that idiot sheriff had put on the guy’s vehicle.

  Dante Jimenez. Only not. Younger than Dante. So—Dante’s son, under the cover name of Jackman. Get the son, get the father.

  Dante Jimenez. The name was enough to send his blood pressure soaring. Jimenez had posed as a drifter with a taste for violence and a deep knowledge of weaponry called Juan Diaz. He’d been perfect. Jimenez had pushed his way up through the ranks through intelligence and ruthlessness until he’d been his father’s right-hand man. His father had defeated the Guadalajara cartel and was busy sweeping up the smaller gangs, consolidating them, making them part of his efficient system. In 1979 he’d taken in a billion and a half dollars, at the time a fortune so large it rivaled the big family fortunes of the east coast.

  Gustavo was starting the move to distance himself from the day-to-day operations, leaving everything in the capable hands of Diaz/Jimenez, starting to plan his son’s college education—Harvard or Yale, and he was perfectly prepared to make a huge donation to ensure his son’s acceptance—when it all blew up in his face.

  Because the man he knew as Juan Diaz, the man he’d considered his natural heir, was a famous undercover agent, a legend in the DEA. And the man who’d engineered the cartel’s downfall.

  His money confiscated, tried as a US citizen and condemned to forty years in a maximum-security federal prison, Gustavo’s fall was complete. Carlos didn’t go to Harvard and didn’t go to Yale. He barely finished high school and he’d spent his adult life trying to piece together the remnants of his father’s empire.

  But even from prison, Gustavo had made sure Jimenez paid a heavy price. He had two of Jimenez’s cousins shot dead and he’d targeted a woman Jimenez cared about. After which Jimenez disappeared from view, though he was still hunting them. Jimenez knew all the Villalongo secrets.

  So Gustavo put out a big reward for news leading to Jimenez’s whereabouts because he wouldn’t rest until he had Jimenez’s head. Sent to the Washingtom office of the DEA in a bag.

  But Jimenez disappeared, and not all of Gustavo’s dwindling resources could bribe, extort, or beat the name out of anyone. Gustavo’s heart had exploded in his chest in prison from rage and confinement. Carlos had barely survived the attack on his cartel upon his father’s death.

  What should have been one of the great, historic cartels, more powerful than governments and almost more powerful than God, sputtered and almost died.

  But now, he had leverage over Jimenez.

  Find the son, find the father.

  Green Orchards Rest Home

  Henderson, Nevada

  The rest home was just outside Henderson, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas. Felicity found it in the time it took him to get behind the wheel of his SUV, bless her. It was called Green Orchards, and it specialized in caring for sufferers of Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.

  Jacko shuddered as he put his truck into gear. God. One of his worst nightmares, losing his marbles. All through his childhood, with no support, no family to speak of, nothing to his name, at least he’d always had his brains, and it had been enough. He’d pulled through, done well by himself.

  All you really needed was right between your ears.

  Once you lost that, you lost everything.

  By the time Jacko was on the road that would take him to Las Vegas, Felicity had sent him all of Pendleton’s info. When he’d been admitted, his clinical diagnosis, a list of the physicians and nurses who dealt with him, mini-mental tests administered over the years.

  A
ccording to the files Felicity had, Pendleton’s dementia was slight, stage two, which was one of minor memory impairment. According to Felicity, who’d done some background digging as only she could do, it was Pendleton’s son who’d had him admitted to the special care facility.

  Jacko could read between the lines. Old Pops was getting forgetful, had been pushed into retirement, the obvious thing was moving in with Junior or at least close enough for Junior to look after Pops.

  But Junior—in the person of Tom Pendleton, Esq, with a thriving law practice in Connecticut—had no desire to be a caregiver and had rushed Pops into a well-known facility, which cost Pops his entire pension and big chunks from the sale of his house.

  Jacko pulled over and, out of curiosity, opened the file Felicity had put together on Tom Pendleton. Christ, Jacko hated him on sight. Tall, thin, a thousand-dollar haircut and a five thousand-dollar suit. Partner in a big law firm. Tenth largest law firm in the country.

  No, Tom Pendleton wouldn’t have time for a father who needed a little help.

  Jacko sighed. That had been his knowledge of the world before Lauren. Dog eat dog. Look out for yourself because no one else is going to. Lauren had taught him about love, had taught him that no sacrifice was too big for someone you love.

  He got it.

  Till death do us part.

  When they got married, when he said those words to her, it would be heartfelt, meant with every fiber of his being.

  Tom Pendleton lived in another world, a different one from the one Jacko now inhabited, where commitments were total and lifelong.

  He wanted to call Lauren but…he was done with phones. Henderson would be his last stop on this trip down memory lane. Soon he’d be on his way home and he wouldn’t have to listen to Lauren’s voice over the airwaves, he could listen to her voice directly. Holding her tight, never letting her go.