The Shop

by J. Carson Black

  “The veep?”

  “The vice president? Owen Pintek? Remember him?” As if Jolie should know everything she did about the goings-on at Indigo Island. “I know I told you this. He’s always coming down here—it’s private and he can have a good time.”

  “I like his wife.” The vice president’s wife worked tirelessly for the women of Afghanistan. She’d used the bully pulpit, and used it well. A beautiful, charming woman. Genuine.

  “Merle doesn’t come down here much.”

  “Why not?”

  “They have separate lives.” Kay lowered her voice. “Between you and me? He likes boys.”

  Jolie Googled Vice President Pintek, plus visit, plus Cape San Blas. The first two of seven hits were from the National Enquirer. The other four looked like blogs, each one referencing the Enquirer’s headline: “VEEP’S SECRET GAY HIDEAWAY.”

  The article about the vice president was the cover story for the April 3 edition of the Enquirer, accompanied by a telephoto shot of Indigo Island.

  “After months of playing hide-and-seek at Washington’s toniest gay underground love nests, Vice President Owen Pintek has moved operations to a private Florida island more suitable to hedonistic fun and games, insiders say. ‘He can’t get out and about the way he used to since he became vice president,’ says one staffer close to the VP. ‘Too many people know about him—and his unusual appetites.’”

  Jolie had never paid attention to the National Enquirer. It wasn’t on her radar at all. She’d walk right past it in the supermarket, never even register its existence. So she had no idea that the vice president of the United States would be on the cover. She opened up the cached webpage and scanned the article from over two months before. It was mostly innuendo with no real facts—enough journalistic leeway to drive a truck through.

  The whole case hinged on the word of an unnamed staffer, as well as “sources close to the vice president.” According to the staffer and the sources, Pintek not only liked boys, but he liked rough sex. He liked sex games, he liked bondage. He liked being choked, and he liked choking. And his favorite place to blow off steam was Indigo Island, the home of the former attorney general of the United States.

  Jolie went back to Google. There were no references to Owen Pintek and his sexual preferences other than this Enquirer article and another in the same tabloid—a rehash. Jolie often watched CNN on the nights she was home. She’d never seen any reference to Pintek’s homosexuality. She’d never read about it in the paper. She doubted this story had made the mainstream media. It was all innuendo.

  She went back to the Google search, looking for other references to the VP, and found the important one, halfway down the third page. Just a small snippet, a quote from the Port St. Joe Star.

  Owen Pintek was in town on Memorial Day weekend.

  He was at Indigo.

  Jolie drove into the empty parking lot of the Starliner Motel. The neon sign was dark. She remembered that first night, remembered the way the sign buzzed and blinked: N- VACA-CY. The office door was locked. She walked around the side of the office, which also served as Royce Brady’s living quarters, but the shades were pulled and no light seeped out. She knocked on the door out of practice, but she knew the place was empty.

  There is always a feeling to a place that has been abandoned. Even if it’s only been a day or two, everyone knows. The animals know and move in. People driving by sense the place isn’t lived-in anymore.

  Jolie tried Brady’s number, got his voice mail. She should know the disposition of the case against him, but didn’t. Was he incarcerated? Doubtful. She was sure he’d have been able to make bail. In fact, it could be that he wasn’t even charged.

  She could ask Skeet, and he’d probably tell her. But then he’d want to know why.

  She ran through the sequence of events on the day of the standoff. According to Mrs. Frawley’s granddaughter, Charly, Luke Perdue left with a man on the morning of the standoff. An hour later he took Kathy Westbrook hostage and holed up in the motel room. Chief Akers negotiated with him for several hours, and it looked as if it would turn out all right. Then Luke brought his hostage to the door, and that was when it went wrong. The FBI sniper killed them both.

  Which led to the question, did the FBI have anything to do with his? Could it have been a setup?

  If it was a setup, there would have to be a reason. Jolie couldn’t think of any, except a tenuous relationship between Luke and Riley’s breakup and the vice president acting on his predilection for young men. Both happened on the same night, on the same weekend.

  It all became clear. Luke didn’t just go out to get some pot and then left. He left because he saw something. Something that scared him.

  Scared or not, Luke had told Amy. He’d involved her in it somehow. Jolie was sure of it.

  She took the walkway that ran along the front of the units. She came to the oleanders and looked through a gap in the hedge at the railroad tracks beyond. The streetlight shone on them. The rails glimmered like a broken silver necklace.

  Jolie could guess the location of the shooter’s railcar by the trajectory of the bullet that crashed through Perdue’s throat. She pictured the FBI sniper and his spotter lying belly-down on the railcar’s roof.

  What happened that day? What made Luke take that woman hostage?

  A road paralleled the railroad tracks.

  Jolie pushed through the break in the oleanders, crossed the tracks, and stepped onto the road. The street followed a slight grade to a shallow basin. Jolie saw houses and trees along the road, the glow of their windows.

  She started down the hill.

  37

  The CO2 Dan-Inject JM Standard, extremely compact and with a total length no longer than its barrel, was made for precision shooting, although Landry hardly worried about it from ten feet away. The lookout’s body had blocked the entrance to the galley—it would have been impossible to miss him. Landry broke the tranquilizer rifle down and cleaned it while he waited for the triptascoline to take effect, taking his time and admiring the sleek efficiency of this model and its weather-resistant anodized aluminum parts.

  When he was done, he gently laid the JM Standard in its soft-sided case and turned his attention to the lookout. He removed the dart from the lookout’s neck, dragged him to the other bench seat in the galley, and propped him up. He started the IV drip and adjusted it downward.

  Next, Landry walked Frank to the radio and had him call his security detail. Frank told the head of security he was having too much fun out here, and he would be back home in the morning. The head of his security detail believed him. In fact, the man’s voice betrayed the fact that this had happened many times. The head of security made the same weak arguments he must have made before. But Frank, drugged as he was, could be headstrong. And Landry had primed the pump, telling Frank he was cooking sea bass accompanied by a very nice Pouilly-Fuissé. They were old friends by this time—blood cousins. So Frank sounded three sheets to the wind but happy, which was exactly what Landry wanted. Afterwards, he led Frank back to bed and let him sleep.

  Landry took the boat out into the bay. It was going on dark, but that was fine. His attention turned to his captive, the lookout. He knew he would have to be patient with this man.

  Turned out, it didn’t take long to break him. The man, an FBI agent named Eric Salter, was ambivalent, angry, and riddled with guilt. Once he started talking, he didn’t stop.

  Eric Salter told Landry that he and his partner had been sent to monitor the former attorney general’s actions. Salter admitted that the surveillance wasn’t officially sanctioned by the FBI. He and the other guy, the dead man currently residing in the Hinckley’s bench seat, were “on their own.”

  “What’s your partner’s name?”

  “He’s not my partner. He’s a private investigator named Bakus. Some investigator. He doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”

  The reason Salter was here at all was because of a mistake he’d
made in Iraq. He’d killed innocent civilians. Someone in the U.S. knew what he’d done and held it over his head.

  Salter told Landry he’d been en route to a hostage situation four weeks ago when he received a call on a secure line.

  The caller told him to shoot the man in the motel room.

  Eric Salter was a sniper with the FBI.

  He said no, of course. But then they put his eight-year-old daughter on the line. She’d been picked up on her way to school.

  “So now it wasn’t just about ruining my career,” Eric Salter said. “They would have killed her.”

  Landry thought about how he would feel if someone had picked up Kristal. His reaction would have been different. He would have found the abductor and killed him slowly. He asked, “So you shot this man when you didn’t need to?”

  “Yes. It was clear he was going to surrender.”

  Landry stared at the man until he squirmed. In that moment he seemed truly lucid, the self-hatred in his eyes shining through. “I thought I had a clean shot, thought I could take him out, but…he moved.”

  “He moved?”

  “Just a quarter of an inch, but it rattled me.”

  “It rattled you because you didn’t want to do it?”

  “Roger that.” Vituperative.

  “Then what happened?” Landry asked, although he wasn’t particularly interested in a hostage situation at a motel.

  “I had the shot. I was sure I had the shot.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “I got him. But I got the hostage, too.”

  When they were done talking, Landry turned up the triptascoline until Eric the FBI agent drifted off into the netherworld. Landry found his carotid artery and injected air from an empty syringe just below the jawline. The resulting embolism was quick, painless, and hard to trace. That done, he deposited the body in the other bench seat compartment.

  The FBI agent hadn’t been much help. He was too consumed by guilt and self-loathing. He didn’t know who ordered the hit. It was all pretty much a wash.

  Clearly, the agent’s fear had affected his aim at the motel. He wasn’t choosing his shot. He was forcing his shot.

  Eric Salter had failed as a sniper. It was probably just as well he was dead.

  38

  Jolie went to seven houses and asked about the standoff at the Starliner Motel. Nobody saw anything. Or didn’t remember seeing anything, which was the same. Kids played in the street. One of them, harnessed to an iPod, zoomed his bike up and down the road in the dark.

  Jolie started back up the road. She heard the hum of bike tires, and the boy skidded to a stop right in front of her. He let the earbuds drop. “You asked my mom about the standoff?”

  “Why, did she see something?”

  “No, but I did.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw a guy.”

  He was walking the bike now, the two of them side by side, heading up the low incline. “What guy?”

  Kid shrugged. “Never saw him before.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Kinda hard to see. He kept to the shadows.”

  “Where’d you see him?”

  He pointed back the way they’d come. “See that first house on the left side? See the boat?”

  Jolie could barely make out an aluminum boat lying facedown on some blocks.

  “I saw him crawl out of there.”

  “Anything about him stand out?” she asked.

  “He had long hair. Didn’t have a shirt on.”

  “Pants?”

  “Jeans. They were kind of low. Not like they were supposed to be, just they were big on him, like he was starved skinny.”

  “Sounds like you saw a lot.”

  He shrugged.

  “Then what?”

  “I was on my bike. When I came back, he was gone. But a few minutes later, I saw him in the Frohmans’ backyard.”

  “What was he doing?’

  The boy paused, looked at her. “He pointed his gun at me.”

  “His gun?”

  “He said, ‘Get the fuck out of here or you’ll be sorry.’”

  “He yelled at you in broad daylight?”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “No.”

  “You’re thinking, how come nobody saw anything? Because everyone was inside. Or in school. That’s why I never said anything to my dad, ’cause I cut school.”

  “You cut school?”

  “I pretended I had a stomachache. Mom works, so I went home and snuck in and got my tackle and went fishing at the Ghost Lakes.”

  “How was the fishing?”

  “Crappie.”

  Jolie smiled—kid had a way about him. “What did you do when he waved the gun at you?”

  “Are you kidding? I took off! Mama didn’t raise no fools.” He was good with accents. Sounded like that black kid who had a TV show when Jolie was a child. “You gonna tell me what’s going on? Was he the guy who took that lady hostage?”

  “Could be.”

  “Then I’m a hero.” He held his hand out. “So where’s my reward?”

  “I guess I could talk to your mom.”

  He sighed. “Didn’t think I’d get anything.”

  “You mind if I record your statement?”

  “Nope.”

  Jolie pulled out her microcassette recorder, and they went through it again. After they were done, it was full dark. “You going to be all right riding back?”

  “Are you kidding?” He got on his bike. “You don’t want to hear about the car?”

  Jolie stared at him. “Car?”

  39

  As she walked back up the road toward the motel, Jolie thought about the description of the car Mark Armstrong had given her. Dark blue, “official-looking, like the Secret Service, only older.”

  Jolie asked him if he saw who was driving. It was just one guy. He had a buzz cut, wore a dark jacket. Close to Charly’s description of the man at her house. Jolie asked him how many times the car went by.

  Four times, he said. Cruising, real slow—it spooked him.

  Before or after the man hid under the boat?

  After.

  Anything else?

  “The front was crushed in. The bumper was dragging, like he’d just been in an accident.”

  It appeared that someone, someone “official,” had picked up Luke Perdue. Luke managed to get away, maybe by causing an accident? Then he hid under a boat, went into the Frohmans’ backyard, and threatened a boy with a gun. It would have taken him only a few minutes to get from the Frohmans’ backyard to the Starliner Motel.

  Jolie didn’t have any more facts, but she could guess what happened from there. Luke Perdue must have spotted Kathy Westbrook and forced his way into her room. He’d been described as desperate. Desperate and scared?

  Running away from Buzz Cut? Did he somehow get Buzz Cut’s gun?

  The gun Luke had used that day had been a “throwdown”—the serial numbers had been filed off. It was untraceable. That would fit with a rogue FBI agent, or even a regular cop. Some cops were known to have an extra, untraceable weapon on them, in case a situation went bad and they needed to point to another suspect.

  Be prepared. The motto wasn’t just for Boy Scouts.

  She could ask Louis to put a BOLO on the car. Dark blue, smashed right quarter panel. But it all happened a month ago. The car was probably long gone. She could only ask Louis for so many favors before wearing out her welcome.

  She took out her phone and called Zoe.

  Zoe answered on the first ring.

  “Did Riley tell you why Luke broke up with her?”

  “Why he broke up with her?” Zoe sounded confused. “I don’t think she knows.”

  “He never told her?”

  “She couldn’t reach him. He wouldn’t answer the phone. He hid out from her.”

  “Hid out?”

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Why not?”r />
  “Because that wasn’t fair. They were in love.”

  She was trying to sound like a caring friend.

  “He didn’t really love her, did he?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was faint, as if she’d pushed the phone away from her mouth. “I guess, I don’t know, maybe he was using her.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I don’t know. Honest.”

  “What did Luke look like?”

  “He was skinny.”

  Jolie vaguely remembered his picture in the paper. “He had long hair and a mustache?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Zoe, did Riley tell you what happened that night?”

  “He just…left. At first she thought it was a joke. I was gone that weekend with my mom, but she called me a bunch of times. She was so upset. She couldn’t reach him, and it drove her crazy. She tried everything. She drove over to his house, but either he was out or he wasn’t answering.”

  “Did she tell you what happened right before he left?”

  “Just what I told you—he said he was going to his truck to get more pot.”

  “So there was no hint that he was going to leave? She thought he would be back?”

  “Of course she did! That was why she was so upset.”

  “Did he meet the vice president?”

  “What?”

  “The vice president. He was there that weekend.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s no way her mom and dad would introduce Luke to the vice president. We had our orders.”

  “Orders?”

  “Like, if anybody important came, we were supposed to stay at the bungalow. We weren’t supposed to leave, because they had to have their privacy. They didn’t want us spying on them.”

  “Could you spy on them?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Zoe?”

  “Look, I…”

  “Zoe, this is important. I’m not out to bust you. I just want to know if you’ve ever spied on any of Riley’s parents’ guests. Have you?”