After a short boat ride back to Martha’s Vineyard, Troy found the storage unit and went inside. Armed with the cruiser, GPS directions, and his M1911, Troy headed to the Tail Spinner strip club. A mile from the place, the car dinged, warning him that he was about out of gas. Rather than chance running out in the middle of a surveillance mission, he pulled into the Phillips 66 station to fill up. Troy put the pump into the car and leaned backward on it, running through the things he knew about this whole situation.
He knew the gubernatorial candidate Frank McCorker was actually Buff Summerton—his old commanding officer back in Afghanistan. He also knew that Winchester Boonesborough, the former D.A. down in Murrells Inlet was now a senator in Massachusetts. It was like a reunion of bad dudes from his past.
Boonesborough was helping Buff run a campaign to get his new identity elected governor of Massachusetts with funding from some kind of drug and gun ring that presumably was all being run out of an Airbnb that Boonesborough owned on Martha’s Vineyard. The dude named Country was apparently in charge of all that, and was working on some kind of big deal that was going to help push the McCorker campaign over the finish line.
He had no idea how the cop Jed was tied up in all of this. He was probably just a bad cop on the take. A kickback from the Summerton and Boonesborough camp ensured that the police would look the other way when they had shipments or deliveries, and from the sound of things, they were using this strip club outside of town as a cover for meetings and such. Not a bad place to do dirty deeds, Troy thought.
His mind turned to Prosperity. Young, beautiful, and totally innocent. She had stumbled into the wrong room at the wrong time and now they were going to make her disappear—if they hadn’t already. He took a deep breath and stared at his reflection in the car on the other side of the pump. When his reflection opened the door and stepped out, Troy was sure he was hallucinating. Not enough sleep, too much lemonade and rum, and now he was seeing things. He rubbed his eyes, but his reflection did not disappear. In fact, it took the nozzle from the pump and put it into the other car.
Troy walked around to the other side and upon closer inspection, realized he was not seeing himself. This was a near carbon copy of himself—but a little taller, a little younger, and a lot more good looking.
The kid, who was the second guy Troy had seen today that resembled him, wore a cowboy hat, a white linen shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops. His face was stubbly, but it was dark hair like Troy’s and had looked like a full beard. He noticed Troy staring at him and tipped his hat slightly.
“I’ll be dang,” Troy said.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
Troy extended a hand. “Howdy. Might I ask your name?”
The kid took it and shook it firmly. “T.J., sir. And you?”
“Troy. Troy Bodean.”
“I like your hat,” the kid said.
“Yeah. That’s what made me come over. I like yours too. Looks like we have similar tastes.”
“Yup.”
Troy had no idea what more to say, so he nodded and walked back to his side of the pump. He had heard that everyone has a twin somewhere on the planet, and today he’d met two of them. One was what he expected he might look like in a few years, and this kid, T.J., was like a younger version of himself. It was the boy he had been when he came back from Afghanistan. His pump clicked off, bringing him out of his daze. He replaced the nozzle, slid his gun under the driver’s seat, and walked inside the store to pay and pick up a twelve pack.
Studying the contents of the beer cooler and its lack of Corona, Troy yawned. He hadn’t realized until just now that he’d been going on just a few hours of sleep the last couple of days. He picked a random IPA and stuck his hand into an iced down tub of Red Bulls and pulled one out. He looked up to see T.J. standing on the other side of the tub.
“I see what you mean about similar tastes,” he said, sticking his hand in and grabbing two cans.
“You gettin’ two of those, kid?” he asked as he pointed at the Red Bulls. “Them things’ll kill you, ya know?”
T.J. jutted his chin toward the twelve pack of beer. “Not as fast as those will.”
“Touché,” Troy said, “but you’re a young man, full of vim and vigor. Why do you need a can full of caffeine?”
The kid shrugged his shoulders as they walked down the candy aisle. He bent down and picked up two king-size Milky Way bars.
“Some caffeine and some sugar to keep me awake till my mamas get off work,” he said. “It’s a night shift. They don’t get off till four in the mornin’.”
Troy almost balked realizing the kid had two moms, but it is a brave new world, so he rolled with it. More power to ’em, he thought. Love is love is love.
“Dang,” he said. “What are they doin’ till 4 am? Ain’t no factories out here. Heck, only thing open that late is the strip club.”
T.J. looked at him blankly.
“Oh,” Troy said. “Ohhhhh, I see.”
“Yeah,” T.J. said, dumping his drinks and candy bars onto the counter. “I don’t like to talk about it. They keep sayin’ they’re gonna quit soon, but they started sayin’ that two years ago.”
Troy slapped his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’ll all work out for the best.”
“I reckon.” T.J. laid a twenty dollar bill on the counter.
The woman behind the counter turned the register’s LED screen around. “It’s twenty-two forty seven. You’re a little short.”
“Aw, crap,” T.J. said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Lemme run out to the car and see if I got some change.”
Troy put his beer and Red Bull on the counter, and reached down to pick up the twenty. He handed it to T.J.
“Just put all this together, please,” he told the woman at the register.
She rolled her eyes and swiped the new items past the laser. Troy paid her with his last bit of cash and walked out with T.J.
“Hey, I was actually headin’ out to the club for a bit.”
T.J. arched an eyebrow.
“Not to go in, mind you,” Troy said. “For somethin’ else entirely.”
“None of my business,” T.J. said.
“Anyway, my point is I could hang with you for a bit. Keep you company till your moms get off work.”
T.J.’s eyes squinted. “You ain’t some kind of pervert trying to hit on me or nothin’, right?”
Troy laughed. “Not hardly.”
They walked toward the gas pump and T.J. seemed to notice the police car for the first time.
“Oh, I get it,” he said. “You’re a cop.”
Troy decided not to correct him. “Don’t worry. Just a recon mission. Ain’t nobody goin’ to jail tonight.”
Considering the hornet’s nest he was probably driving into at the Tail Spinner, he wondered if he was wrong about that.
23
Testes One Two Three
To say that the night at the Tail Spinner strip club was uneventful would be an understatement. For one thing, the cop there was not the man named Jed Manning. It was an older guy with a bowling ball stomach and a horseshoe of hair. Troy only saw him once all night, when he had walked outside to smoke a cigarette and make a call. Troy rolled down his window to listen to the call. Again, nothing sinister except for the fact the man’s wife apparently did not like the fact that he was working at the strip club. The next call the man made was to the wife’s sister. Though it was an interesting sub-plot, Troy decided it had nothing to do with the big picture of the Prosperity kidnapping.
Other than what Troy guessed was a typical late-night crowd at a strip club, nobody of interest came or went from the Tail Spinner. He waited as long as he could, but he saw no reason to stick around past three-thirty. He spent most of the night just chatting with T.J. Poor kid was the victim of a pretty common scenario. No dad in the picture, and contrary to what Troy thought, his moms were actually twin sisters sharing responsibility for the boy. Apparently they had once had a bit of money,
but they burned through it pretty quickly. And now they had turned to the second oldest profession in the world—taking off all their clothes for money.
T.J. seemed to be a good kid, even had a few part time jobs to make money and contribute to his interesting family. Troy decided he liked the kid and he’d look in on him from time to time.
“You gonna be good here?” Troy asked before he left.
“Nothin’ I’m not used to,” he said.
“Aight. Then I’m gonna cruise,” Troy said, hopping into Michael’s cruiser.
“Talk soon.”
“Bet on it, kid.”
Troy pulled out of the gravel lot and wondered where the hell he should go next. His answer appeared as a roadblock on the way home. Three police cars lined the road, blocking the most direct route back to the Airbnb. As Troy approached, he pulled his hat off and tossed it into the passenger’s seat. The first officer flagged him down. Troy eased up and rolled his window down.
“Howdy, brother,” the officer said.
Troy recognized him as the same cop who’d been there at the Black Dog Tavern, and he thought it was the same voice on the radio announcing the APB—Jed Manning.
“Somethin’ goin’ on, officer?” Troy asked.
“You might say so, friend. Big rally tomorrow for the Frank McCorker campaign. It’s going to be huge.”
“Ah, yes,” Troy said. “I can’t wait to see it.”
“Do I know you?” the officer asked, leaning down to look into the car. “Say, is this an old police cruiser?”
Troy did his best to look confused. “Can’t say if I know you. And I wouldn’t know about the car, I bought her used.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need to run the tags. You mind to step out of the car, sir?”
A bead of sweat threatened to form on Troy’s forehead, but he played it off. Technically, he hadn’t done anything wrong. But there was the APB on him. He knew it wouldn’t take long for this cop to realize he was the man they were looking for, but he didn’t know how to get away.
“I’m kinda in a hurry, officer.” Troy pretended to look at his watch. “Gotta get a good night’s sleep before the rally tomorrow.”
Jed opened his mouth, but he was interrupted by a car caught behind Troy honking its horn.
“What’s the holdup, up there?” a voice shouted from the car. “My beer’s gettin’ warm.”
The cop took a deep breath. He looked over at the other two officers and pointed at the car with the honking guy.
“Get him out,” he said. “Call the wagon. I’m thinking we got a DUI back there.”
He looked from Troy to the car with the intoxicated yeller. On cue, the man yelled something again, but it was so slurred, Troy couldn’t make out what he was saying. Before the cop could change his mind, he looked at his imaginary watch again.
“Say, what time did you say that rally was tomorrow? I really don’t want to miss Frank.”
“Gates open at eleven,” Jed finally said. “But the main speeches won’t start until twelve. I’d get here early if I were you.”
“Sounds like a plan. Thank you kindly, officer.”
Troy eased his car forward before the man could protest. The other two officers were busy wrestling the drunk guy out of his car, so Jed waved him through the blockade.
“Get on home, now, you hear?” Troy heard him say as he pulled away.
If only he knew where home was going to be tonight. With the Airbnb off limits and the McCorker office on high alert, he was going to have to think of something else.
Daisy Mae Gallop always loved it when the club offered last call. The men who were still at the Tail Spinner were way past drunk and still had money to throw away on the pipe dream that one of the girls would agree to go home with them. She enjoyed taking their money and promising she would come right over after she got off. Sometimes she would give them a fake number and tell them to text her after closing. It never ceased to amaze her that men still fell for that.
But tonight it was quiet and still. There was one man passed out on a couch in the back and two other guys sitting at the bar. None of them were watching her dance, and none of them were giving her any money either. But she liked the song and gave it her all. She always played Jon Bon Jovi’s song, “Blaze of Glory,” for her final number. There was something poetic in the twangy refrain that made her feel like more than a small town stripper.
That’s when Country ambled in and laid a ten dollar bill on the stage. He sometimes hung around near closing, and more than once he had walked her to her car when there were creepers hanging around in the parking lot waiting on her and Ellie Mae to come out. But tonight something was different. He didn’t look right. She bent down to peck him on the top of his head and saw he had a towel held to his crotch. It was soaked with … blood?
“Darlin’, what’s wrong down there?” she asked.
“Got a bit of a flesh wound is all,” he said. “You got any pink thread in the back?”
Daisy Mae soaked the needle in 151 rum and rolled it between her fingers over a lavender scented candle until it was white hot. Country sat across from her with a clear baggie of ice held on his groin. He was pale and sweaty and starting to sway as she laced a long pink thread through the eye of the needle.
“Few more seconds, darlin’,” Daisy Mae said. “We’ll git ya fixed up real good. Won’t even be able to see the stitches.”
“Ain’t nobody down there these days no way,” Country said.
“Well, now,” Daisy Mae patted his thigh, “we might have to do somethin’ ’bout that when you get all healed up.”
Country smiled and winked at her, though his eyes were narrow slits anyway. She reached down and picked up the bag of ice. She gasped at what she saw underneath and couldn’t help but put her hand up to her mouth trying to hide her shock. The unfortunate shriveling effect of the ice had turned the man’s testicles into a couple of raisins—and in his case, raisins coated with blood. She gagged and coughed.
“Hey, this ain’t funny,” Country wheezed. “Just git done with yer work, woman.”
“I ain’t laughin’, Country,” Daisy Mae said. “It’s just … I dunno if I can do such small stitches.”
“Then do big ones!” he said, a tinge of anger appearing in his voice.
“Honey, you ain’t got enough real estate for big ones.”
He opened his mouth, but she reached down, took hold of his injured one, and stabbed the needle in. The scream that came out of his mouth was so high and shrill that Daisy Mae swore she heard a bunch of dogs start howling outside. In the first of a string of unfortunate events, Country’s legs involuntarily kicked out when she stuck the needle in. His right boot connected with the stool that held the candle and the 151 rum. The rum splashed all over his feet.
The second unfortunate event was the candle lighting the rum. In a whoosh, the flame raced up Country’s ankles, singeing the hair on his calves and turning it instantly to ash. Country yelped and scrambled to his feet shaking them wildly like a rabid tap dancer. Daisy Mae watched as the scene seemed to unfold in slow motion. The flickering fire below his knees seemed just about to go out when the third unfortunate event took place.
The long pink thread dangling from his testicle, now soaked in rum, caught fire. Like a fuse running toward a stick of dynamite in an old Wile E Coyote cartoon, the flame raced toward its end, which was Country’s jabbed family jewel. He seemed to notice this just before it reached its destination, and he took off running.
In the fourth and final of the unfortunate events, Country chose the door to the stage to run through, rather than the exit. He burst through to the door and Daisy Mae watched as a startled Ellie Mae fell off the pole and smacked down on her bare bottom. She was dancing to her last song and for once in her sister’s life, she couldn’t have chosen a better tune.
Country’s flaming, half-naked, frantic dive off the stage coincided with the last verse of Bob Seger's “Fire Down Below.” He grabbed a buck
et of ice and beers from a front row table and turned it over on his lap. The sizzle of the fire going out synced with the final ringing electric guitar twang of the song and the crowd—all three of them—gave him a standing ovation.
24
Dropping Like Flies
Buff Summerton answered his public cell phone as he always did. “McCorker for Governor. This is Frank speaking. How may I serve you?”
He could barely recognize the voice on the other end. It was frazzled and thin.
“Hey, Frank,” the man said. “It’s me.”
He was used to prank calls and figured that’s where this was headed, but until he knew for sure, he had to play it out like a good politician.
“Well, hello, me,” he said with a smile in his voice. “How may I serve you?”
“Frank, it’s me, Country.”
“Shit, Country,” he said. “How many times have I told you to call me on the other line, goddammit.”
He hung up the phone and turned it off. Seconds later, his burner phone—the one he used for Shark business—rang and displayed a number he recognized.
“Yeah?”
“Frank, what the shit? Why’d you hang up on me?”
Something was clearly wrong with Country. His speech was slurred and he spoke so softly that Buff could only hear every other word or so.
“What is it?” he demanded. “Are you at the club?”
“Yup. I am at the club,” he said proudly. “Good news. My balls are stitched up good as new and I just made forty-three dollars and fifteen cents.”
Buff literally held the phone away from his ear and stared at it in disbelief. “Country, if this is a joke, I don’t have time—”
“No, no, no,” Country interrupted him. “I was just callin’ to tell you, I’ve got it all figured out.”
“Spit it out, man. What have you got figured out?”
“I’ve got some of Santa Claus’s DNA. I’m gonna pin the whole thang on him. It’s perfect, don’t ya see?”
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 120