The Shop

by J. Carson Black

  “The scope of what you’re doing,” said Landry. “It’s breathtaking.”

  “You know about it?”

  Landry shook his head in admiration. “Brilliantly audacious.”

  Haddox winked. “No one’s supposed to know about it. It’s our little secret.”

  “No one does. Just you, me…” Landry ticked their names off on his fingers as Haddox watched.

  “The executive director of the CIA,” Haddox said, then frowned. “He’s not executive director anymore. He left, and then I left later, almost two years to the day.”

  “A lot of money to be made,” Landry said. “But that’s not the reason.”

  Haddox nodded sagely. “That’s not the reason. But you’re right, a lot of money. This kind of thing is expensive—specialized—and there aren’t many people in the world who can do it. But it’s worth it! To protect this country, to make sure we’re free.”

  “So the executive director—help me out here—what’s his name again?”

  “Cardamone.” He spat the name. An adrenaline spike. Landry turned down the juice, jotted down the name, and led Haddox away from that subject and back to safer ground. “What did you say the name of your island was?”

  “Indigo. It was named after a plantation we had in East Florida back in the early eighteen hundreds. Before my great-great-grandfather made his fortune in paper, our family grew indigo. Stinking stuff, killed everybody. The slaves—killed ’em in five years, on average. Not the proudest moment in Haddox history.”

  Now that Haddox had calmed down a bit, Landry led him back to where he wanted to go. “But this. The scope of the operation, it’s breathtaking. How did you do it?”

  “What?”

  “How did you stay under the radar?”

  “You mean what I think you mean? We’re not supposed to talk about that. I told Grace—”

  He stopped. His eyes fearful. “Oh God.”

  Landry remained stock-still.

  “Nobody knows Grace knows.”

  “It’s our secret,” Landry said.

  For the first time, Franklin Haddox started to struggle. “What’s this in my arm?”

  “It’s the cord to the blind, see?” Landry said quickly, turning up the drip. Talk him down. “What’s it like, living in an octagon house?”

  “We don’t live there.”

  Testy.

  “My mother wanted it kept a certain way, preserved. No kids playing cowboys and Indians on her expensive old moth-eaten oriental carpets. She and my father built two freestanding houses to live in, back in the fifties. Painted ’em yellow to match the Wedding Cake. That’s what we call the…octa.” He paused. “Octagon…al. House.” He looked up at Landry, seeking approval. “I bet you don’t know about the secret passageway.”

  “Secret passageway?”

  “It was built in the twenties, during Prohibition. Those were wild days—my great-grandfather knew a lot of movie stars, had an affair with one of them. Can’t remember who. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks came down here for R and R. Lot of people came down here to let off steam. Valentino. Clark Gable, in the thirties. They wanted to get away from all that scrutiny.”

  “Tell me about the passageway.”

  “It’s a secret.” He winked, a broad stage wink. Landry didn’t like the wink, and he didn’t like Haddox.

  “Passageway?” Landry reminded him.

  “Goes from the Wedding Cake to the cabanas and comes out by the old boathouse. The pool was built in, oh, 1922? They’d bring the booze out on boats and take it through the tunnel. Just a precaution—my great-grandfather bought off the local constabulary, used to hunt ’gators with the sheriff. Ironic, huh? Sheriff probably enjoyed Great-Granddad’s bootleg booze on a number of occasions. Now one of the family’s in the sheriff’s office, did I tell you that?”

  “Your niece?”

  “Don’t really know her—long story. Her only claim to fame was being the Petal Soft Soap Baby. Her mother—” He stopped himself. Got that sly look in his eye. Something there. Landry doubted it was relevant to what he needed to know, but he asked anyway. “Her mother?”

  “She’s dead.” He focused on Landry. “Long, long story. Her daughter… Did I tell you we have a cop in the family? A detective. Real small potatoes—my guess is she spends all her time investigating bicycle thefts, things like that.”

  Landry turned the subject to security. Specifically, what kind of security they had on the island.

  “You won’t believe this, but when I left? They said I was on my own—no more security detail. Just like that.”

  “But you have security now?”

  “Rent-a-cops. But the place is secure, you’d better believe it. The VP comes down here a lot, so everything’s in place, paid for by the U.S. government—motion sensors, cameras, all sorts of stuff. You should see it when Owen comes. Snipers on the roofs, Coast Guard, one if by land, two if by sea. It’s like a traveling circus, only real buttoned-down, you know? All those guys in suits talking into their wrists. Reminds me of when I had my own motorcade. Nobody appreciates how important I was to this country.”

  Diatribe time. Landry let him ramble. Finally he wound down. “I did a lot for the people of the United States.”

  Landry held Frank’s wrist up and checked his pulse rate. He said, “I know you did. The average American Joe doesn’t understand that, but I do. I admire you.”

  “You admire me?”

  “I like the way your mind works. But I’m curious. What gave you the idea?”

  “The idea?” Haddox looked at him, confused.

  “Aspen. Brienne Cross. It was brilliant.”

  “Oh, that. Aspen wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, either. You remember the Mexican singer? What’s her name? And a bunch of others—you wouldn’t believe how easy it was—how well it’s worked. Talk about ‘thinking outside the box.’ Simple but brilliant. Brienne Cross is just the tip of the iceberg.” He smiled.

  Landry smiled, too.

  33

  On the way out of Panama City, just before Tyndall Air Force Base, there was a little hole-in-the-wall flower shop called Sweetheart’s. Jolie bought white roses there. She slid open the frosted glass door and picked out the bouquet, not the most expensive but not the least expensive either, and inhaled the damp sweet smell of the flowers, beaded with moisture.

  She paid the clerk, a woman she recognized but did not know by name, a big woman in a flowered smock with dozens of rings on her fingers that matched her barrettes. The woman beamed, her cheeks exactly like round apples, and asked Jolie if she wanted a card to write her sentiments on.

  “No thanks,” Jolie said. “He knows what I think.”

  “That’s the best kind of relationship,” the woman said.

  Jolie drove into the cemetery off Palmetto Road and walked to the headstone set into the grass like a paving stone. The stone was polished granite. She couldn’t really afford it, but felt she had to give him the best. He’d been denied the big send-off, with cops from all over Florida, spit-shined and stoic, tears in their eyes. The fired salute, the folded flag, Jolie in a black dress and veil. None of that. She tried to make up for it with the gold engraving of a badge cut into the stone. The dark gray granite shimmered in and out of a lone pine’s shadow, declaring itself bravely: this was a person somebody lavished money on.

  Jolie set the flowers in the cup and glanced at her watch. Every month, sixteen of them, she’d come here on or around the anniversary of Danny’s death. Lately, the date seemed to slip by and she’d make it sometime during the week. Her devotion had stayed the same—forced. First it was stunned and forced. Then it was raw and forced. Then it was angry and forced. Now it was just forced. She’d skipped right past grief, and she felt guilty about that. There was nothing left to her presence here except her need to show the world that Dan Tybee was not forgotten.

  Her father had taught her about solidarity early on. Hold up your side. Danny was a good cop, an
d he deserved a cop’s funeral. If they didn’t give him the send-off, she would. Whether or not she loved him, she would damn well give him that.

  The really bad thing? She had loved him. She’d loved him unreservedly, up to the moment the gunshot reverberated through the air of that deserted cabin.

  Kay told her to let it go. “It’s time you stopped being a widow.” “You need to move on.” “Don’t be a martyr.”

  She wasn’t a martyr.

  Truth to tell, being a widow made things a whole hell of a lot easier. She didn’t have to even think of finding another man. That was off the table for now—no way she was ready for that. She wore the ring and she visited the grave and she refused to talk about it and that pretty much did the trick. But coming to his grave had become a chore, something she did for the sake of doing. When she stood at his grave, Jolie felt nothing but impatience. Her mind filled with other things she had to do.

  But she’d keep him here. Keep his memory. He’d slipped away from her in every other way, but here, under her feet, she finally had his attention.

  34

  Landry went online to look for an off-track betting parlor. He found one—a ten-minute taxi ride away from Frank’s slip in the Emerald Bay Marina in Panama City, where they were currently moored.

  Frank kept the slip so he could entertain guests or play golf at the Marriott.

  Landry’s older brother called him early this morning with the news that Chernobyl Ant would finally run today at Hollywood Park. It would be his first race. The colt had the recurring quarter crack, but the patch on his hoof was solid and the track conditions were good, so it was a go. Earlier, Landry had clicked through the channels on Franklin’s satellite TV and discovered that Frank’s service didn’t subscribe to the racing channels.

  Landry made sure the attorney general was secured in the bed—trussed up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey—and raised the level of the triptascoline drip. He closed the blinds and locked everything up tight. He had Frank’s card to get in and out of the gated marina.

  The OTB was in a bar, smoky and dark and anonymous. Lots of characters. They looked as if their lives had been drifting out of them, like a slow leak in a tire. Too many beers over a lifetime, too many cigarettes. But then the horses came on simulcast and life came back to their eyes, as if these people remembered who they were. The racetrack could do that.

  He took a place at the bar and looked up at the monitor. There was one race before Chernobyl Ant’s. Landry watched the horses parade down the track at Hollywood Park. Bright green grass. Palms. The California haze. Landry loved the backstretch, loved the action there. It would always be inside him. The only thing more important to him at the moment was taking care of business for Brienne and the others.

  Now he knew why they died. All of them: the Egyptian professor, the Mexican pop star, the actor and his wife in Montana.

  It was the result of Franklin’s “audacious plan.” “So simple,” he’d told Landry, the triptascoline working just like a truth serum.

  “It didn’t bother you that they were innocent people? That you just picked them off a list and killed them for the hell of it?”

  “Not for the hell of it,” Franklin said. “They were important. They were a distraction.”

  A distraction.

  And Landry had followed orders, blindly. He’d had no idea he was working for private interests, not for his country. He couldn’t bring Brienne Cross back, but he could avenge her death. Her death, and the others.

  The race was coming up. He picked a powerful gray colt, and the gray won. His jockey expertly flipped his whip around and wriggled it—his version of celebrating in the end zone.

  Landry knew what it was like, that feeling of athleticism, the rocking action in the stirrups as you balanced above the horse’s back, the ground rushing underneath. Pushing with his wrists on the animal’s neck, the horse quickening. The feeling when you crossed the wire in first.

  He’d ridden twenty-six races as a bug boy. Then he shot up into the giant he was now.

  When it was over for him, he’d closed the door. When he closed a door in his life, that was it.

  Finally, it was jockeys up. The colt looked good. A flashy chestnut like his daddy. He moved with confidence, interested in his surroundings. No fear in him. He broke a step slow, but caught up fast. Too fast? Landry felt his heart thump hard. Was the jock screwing up? Bejarano—he had to know what he was doing! They’d sweated blood to get him.

  Settling into a good rhythm going down the backstretch, three from the rail, the colt moving up. Well within himself. You could tell by Bejarano’s arms, following the reins in a subtle rocking rhythm, steady and relaxed, but there was coiled strength underneath. Plenty of horse. And then, right before the turn, Rafael shook the reins and Chernobyl Ant took off.

  Landry didn’t know when he realized it would be a rout.

  First he was ahead by a length, then widened to four, five, six, his lead growing with every stride.

  Eleven and a half lengths at the wire!

  The feeling bubbled up inside him. A deep and satisfying smile warmed him like a rising sun. He ignored the cigarette smoke, the dank smell of whiskey, the crowd jabbering. Walked out into the sunset, appreciating the palms fluttering against the lurid red-and-plum sky.

  Eleven and a half lengths.

  35

  A man stood under the overhang of the gift store and bait shop, eating a candy bar. Landry had been on his way back to the boat when he spotted him.

  The man was easy to make. He pretended to look at the bulletin board by the door, which was cluttered with business cards and photos of tourists holding up big fish. It was dusk, gloomy, but he could tell the man kept one eye on the AG’s boat. He looked casual, but wasn’t. For one thing, he wasn’t really looking at the photos. Landry could tell by the inclination of his head, by the small movements he made, shifting slightly to the left and then turning back. His cap pulled down too low.

  Landry walked down the other dock to a slip holding a sports fisher and stepped aboard. Walked around the outside of the cabin as if he owned it. Bent down to work the line.

  He did this for maybe a minute. Darkness closing in. He slipped into the water, swam under the dock, and came up on the other side. Got his bearings and swam to the other dock, right to where Frank’s boat, Judicial Restraint, was tied up.

  He had not lost his ability to board a boat silently. It was like riding a bicycle; you never forgot.

  He slid sideways through the narrow doorway to the galley, looking toward the stateroom doorway. He’d memorized the layout. He saw the edge of something black—a man’s leg, clad in cargo pants. Knife in a scabbard. Soft-soled shoes.

  Another man.

  The watcher by the bait shop must be a lookout. He could be one of Frank’s people, but Landry doubted that. He was pretty sure that someone besides him was interested in Frank’s business.

  The man on the boat must have just gotten here. He was bent over the bed, looking at the bag of triptascoline, trying to figure out what it was.

  The entry to the stateroom was extremely narrow. Landry sidled in, then moved quickly.

  The man sensed something and stiffened. Landry had seen this in a rabbit just before a hawk bolted out of the sky—a sixth sense. But the man wasn’t a pro. It took him a second to believe his senses, and by that time it was too late. Landry held his head in a vise, hands on either side of the head. He jerked backwards, wrenching the neck sideways at the same time. Heard the pop as the neck snapped, severing the spinal cord: instant unconsciousness, followed by death.

  He allowed the body to fall back against him, then lowered it to the sole. The smell of feces was overpowering.

  Landry found a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Fantastic. He cleaned the body up and dragged it to one of the bench storage seats in the galley. Lifted the hinged seat. Empty. He heaved the body inside and closed the lid.

  More cleanup. There wasn’t much. Urine tra
iling to the bench seat, pulled along by the man’s heels. Landry worked efficiently and quietly in the light of the dim lamp from the stateroom. He wet a towel to get rid of the Fantastic smell, wiped the galley sole dry. Admiring the satin finish of the cherry wood sheen.

  Twenty minutes later, he felt the boat rock as the lookout stepped aboard.

  The man was quiet and careful, but eventually he would have to come through the doorway.

  When he did, Landry shot him.

  36

  Jolie thought: Memorial Day weekend.

  Something had gone on at Cape San Blas that weekend. A party, a gathering—something. She remembered Kay mentioning it. Kay was always mentioning parties and galas and barbecues and visiting dignitaries, and Jolie was always tuning her out. Now she wished she’d listened better.

  She almost called Kay, but decided not to. As much as she liked her cousin, this time she would keep her in the dark.

  She Googled Memorial Day and Indigo. Memorial Day and Frank Haddox, Memorial Day and attorney general and “party.” And so on.

  Zip.

  Jolie thought about Zoe and Riley, the day they visited the sheriff’s office. Riley worried about the nude pictures on Luke’s cell phone. Zoe telling Jolie that Riley and Luke broke up that weekend.

  Jolie didn’t like coincidences, but she couldn’t see how these pieces fit. What did Riley’s and Luke’s breakup have to do with a missing gay man? Luke and Riley’s breakup seemed straightforward and self-contained: Luke had broken up with Riley, and Riley was worried that Luke had a sex video of her on his phone. The phone was probably with the FBI—swallowed up into a black hole.

  So Jolie tried it from the other end. The man named Rick had come to Cove Bar looking for a young man to take to a party on San Blas. A certain type. Like picking a lobster out of a tank. Technically a man, but slim, young-looking, boyish.

  A memory poked up.

  It was just a piece of gossip, something her cousin Kay had told her when they were alone together on a shopping trip in Tallahassee. Kay looked around at the few oblivious shoppers in the mall before saying anything. “The veep’s coming this weekend.”