by Nick Thacker
“Well,” Hannah said. “I guess I was the key to everything.”
She walked over as Truman returned to the bar to refill our drinks. I saw her sidling up to me, her curves, her tousled hair, her bandages, and I tried to sit up straighter.
She leaned in, grabbing my chin, and kissed me.
I kissed her back, a deep, well-meaning thing I hadn’t done in over ten years. I suddenly wished even harder that I hadn’t been shot through the leg, but I didn’t want to take this kiss away, either. I sat back, drained, drowning in Hannah’s affection.
She pulled back and Truman was there, smiling. He had two glasses in tow, darker colored than the Booker’s.
“Well,” he said. “I would offer to leave you two here, but I think my team has a bit more to clear up. Hate to ask you, but…”
“No,” Hannah said, “it’s fine. I can thank Mason a little later.”
I couldn’t help but grin a stupid, idiot-looking grin.
She smacked my shoulder as she stood up. “Stop it. Don’t get any fancy ideas. I told you I would pay you. With money.”
She left the yacht and I waited around for someone to bring me a set of crutches. My leg had been wrapped and tightly bound, but the pain of moving it was still intense. I wanted to get out of there, to get back to my place and the bar, and to debrief with Joey.
He came in next.
“Hey boss,” he said. “How you feeling?”
Joey had his hand wrapped in a sling, four of his fingers bound in gauze and set in temporary casts.
“Better than you, I’d guess,” I said.
“Really?” Joey asked. “With your leg, I think I got the better end of the deal.”
“Well, at least I had the satisfaction of taking care of things myself. You decided to stay back in the other room.”
“You’d better watch your mouth, Dixon, or I’ll shoot your other leg.”
I laughed. “Right, with your aim? You’d be lucky to make another hole in this boat.”
“Well, at least I can walk.”
I chuckled. “We need to work on your comebacks, kid. But, I do think you earned that raise.”
Joey walked over to the bar and grabbed at an 18-year scotch on the top shelf. He had to fight with it a bit to get it open with one hand, but he poured himself a drink and came over to sit where Hannah had been sitting earlier.
We looked each other over, not speaking, and Joey lifted his glass.
I nodded, smiling. Then I lifted my glass and clinked it on the side of his.
“Cheers,” he said.
“Cheers.”
63
HANNAH WAS THERE. JOEY WAS there. The locals and oldies were all there, too. We drank, talked, and generally had a great time. I looked around at all of it and felt, once again, the feeling of intense satisfaction I’d felt the day I opened.
It was the same place, and yet it had changed over the years. The clientele had grown, but some had died off and some had moved away. The oldies were still their curmudgeonly selves, ready to pounce on me for pouring too little into a double on the rocks, or for garnishing a drink with anything more robust than a lemon twist.
Joey flipped the catfish and served them up, and poured his share of drinks. To the visitors it all seemed to be a normal service. A normal day, in the normal lives of the normal bartenders. No one knew what had transpired just a day before, and no one asked.
They’d assumed we’d been fishing. It wasn’t common for my place to shut down on a Friday night, but it wasn’t exactly unheard of, either. News about Marley would reach the local paper late tonight, and everyone in town would know about it by tomorrow morning.
But tonight, everything was normal. Great, even.
I was happy, Hannah was trying her best to stop thinking about her father and her brother — Truman had offered to send one of his team to Daniel’s wife, to tell her the news. She’d figured that would seem better somehow, more official. Maybe even more respectable. So she allowed it, and vowed to give her a call tomorrow or Monday.
Joey was happy, too. He was usually happy, in a satisfied way, not a happy-go-lucky way. He was a good man to have around, and I had been reminded of that a thousand times this week. When we arrived at the bar this morning, he didn’t even ask about the raise.
So it was with great pleasure that I surprised him with something even better: I offered him a small stake in ownership of the company. I wanted to expand one day, I told him, and I would need someone to do the lighting in the new place. If he was really lucky I might even let him flip catfish.
He was ecstatic, blown away that I’d even offer. After we joked around about it, I confided in him that I wanted him to take on a bigger managerial role around here, if he wanted it, and that of course would come with more money. Again, he accepted.
We were all at the bar, Joey and me on one side and Hannah on the other, and we laughed and talked for a few hours while the guests milled about and played their cards around us.
We were in the middle of hearing one of Joey’s terrible Navy stories (from my perspective, all Navy stories are terrible), when Truman walked in.
He was wearing blue jeans and a weird tight sweater, but I figured this was the only attempt his wardrobe could provide at ‘casual dress.’ He walked up to the counter.
“What can I get you?” I asked.
“What’s good?”
“I hate that question. What do you like?”
“What are you drinking?”
“Rum. Real gamey stuff Joey brought back from a vacation to Jamaica a couple years ago.”
“Sounds… terrible. Will I like it?”
“If you like the taste of sour meat and shitty molasses, sure.”
Joey smiled.
“Sounds good,” Truman said. “Give me one of those. On the rocks.”
I nodded and readied a glass to pour him a drink, but Joey was already there. “Don’t listen to a word he says,” Joey said. “It’s amazing. Overproof, so go slow.”
He passed the glass over to Truman. Truman took a long pull on it, thinking and tasting, contemplating the beverage. He swirled it around in his mouth and chortled it over his tongue a few times like an old pro.
“It’s… horrendous.”
Joey and I laughed, and this time Hannah joined in from next to Truman.
“No, really,” Truman said between coughs. “It’s absolutely disgusting. You really drink this stuff?”
Joey smiled wider. “No, we use it for mixers only. It’s pretty rough. We’re drinking some of that Booker’s Overproof you guys had on Rayburn’s yacht.” He explained it as he took Truman’s glass of rum away and replaced it with a finger of Booker’s, on the rocks.
“You’re a bastard, you know that?” Truman said, still licking the inside of his mouth to remove the taste. “You are too, you little shit,” he said to Joey.
He sipped the Booker’s for a moment, clearly enjoying the glass a lot more, then looked up at me. “About that yacht…”
I cocked an eyebrow and looked at Hannah. She grinned.
“Ms. Rayburn here gave me a call this morning,” he said. “We finished with our work on the boat, so it was all clear pretty early today. Since she’s the next heir in the company — the legitimate portions of the company — and the heir to Rayburn himself, the yacht technically belongs to her.”
“Wow,” I said. “What about the mansion?”
“The estate will be a bit more difficult,” Truman explained, “as it was built on land that’s state-owned. It’ll probably fall to Hannah as well, but it’s going to be a bit of a legal battle for a year or so until we clear it up. But my team’s already on it, and if they can find any workarounds or loopholes, they’ll let her know.”
I turned to Hannah. “Sorry about all this, Hannah. It’s going to be a nightmare.”
“I know,” she said. “But it’s nothing compared to what happened. I’m just glad it’s all over.”
Truman spoke again. “Hanna
h and I talked about it, and it turns out that she had a verbal arrangement with you regarding payment for services rendered?”
I waved Truman off. “Please,” I said. “Don’t even bring that up. Hannah, you know I did this to help you, and that’s it. I didn’t want your money even before I knew —”
“Shut up, Dixon,” she said. “I’m going to pay you. So that’s that. I know you did it to help me out, but you have to understand how I feel about all of it. You’re not turning me down. Just hear him out.”
I turned back to Truman. Joey had finished making a drink for an oldie and he slipped in next to me as well.
“And my legal team informed us that since Mr. Dixon has so far helped Ms. Rayburn out of the kindness of his heart, it would seem that someone could claim Mr. Dixon did, in fact, have another motive in mind.”
“What motive are you talking about?” I asked. I started to grip the bar top harder.
“Nothing serious. But it would require some court visits, debriefing summaries, a bunch of paperwork and crap none of us want to do.”
“So… what?”
“So,” Truman said, “if you were to accept an offering from Ms. Rayburn, my legal team would be formally required to accept the truth that you worked for Ms. Rayburn in expectation of a payment, and nothing more.”
“So she has to pay me, or I’ll be annoyed by you for another few months.”
“Possibly years.”
“Wonderful.”
Hannah leaned in. “It’s what I want, Dixon. I’m never going to use it. After… after everything, especially. I want you to have it.”
I looked down at the empty glass in my hand and then back up at her. “Wait. Are you serious? You want me to have the yacht?”
Joey and Truman smiled, and Hannah nodded. “Yes, I do. It would be perfect. I’m going to go away for awhile, maybe stay with some cousins overseas, but I want someone to take care of it while I’m gone. It’s sort of the last piece of my father I have left, and I don’t like the idea of selling it. Plus it’ll need a new name and a few coats of paint. I was thinking the ‘Mason-Dixon’ would be a perfect name for it.”
Joey laughed. “That is a perfect name for a big-ass, lumbering boat.”
“No,” I said. “There’s no way I’m naming a boat after myself.”
“Well,” Hannah said, “we can discuss it further tonight. Drinks, on the yacht? Maybe a little deck-sitting? My dad never used it, but I think there’s even a master bedroom with a giant whirlpool tub inside.”
I had to admit, that sounded like a great idea.
“On one condition,” Truman added.
Great. “What is that?”
“Guy on my team says he used to have a small yacht. He knows his way around boats, and was dying to take the Wassamassaw out for a spin. How about after you two, uh, break it in, we have a little party for my team on board? They need a vacation, and a little one-night stint might be the perfect thing. Monday or Tuesday night should be fine — most of them are not expected back in the office until Wednesday afternoon anyway.”
“I —”
He held up a hand. “Plus, he tells me you owe him a big favor for — how did he put it — ‘jacking his car from him.’”
I hung my head and smiled. “Yeah, Truman. That sounds fine with me. I’ll play bartender, too.”
64
I WAS STIFF AND SORE, and not just because my leg still had a bleeding bullet wound in it.
Hannah and I had a phenomenal night together, hanging out on the sun deck to watch the sunset, testing out the hot tub and whirlpool, and basking in the moonlight with a couple bottles of wine on the deck chairs. The kayak had been removed and brought to some storage facility somewhere, probably never to be seen again, and some of the carpeting had been cut and pulled up in the bridge and hallway.
The bridge had been cleaned by a professional service Truman’s team had brought in, and they’d taken only about three hours to get the space looking brand-new. The carpet would be replaced if Hannah could get in touch with the company that had done the interior, otherwise she’d just pay another design firm to redo it altogether.
Other than that the yacht was in ‘ship shape,’ a term that I had suddenly latched onto as the funniest thing I’d heard all weekend.
She explained a bit more about how she’d been feeling, trying to process through some of the anger and fear with me, yet knowing it was all going to come crashing down on her in a few days at most. Both of us knew this was our only night we’d have together, and we didn’t want to ruin it.
She told me she’d be traveling, seeing the world and learning some of the history of some of the places she’d always wanted to visit. I nodded along, knowing this was a wise decision — she didn’t have the responsibility of a family and the burden of a job — she needed the time and space to process everything.
We cried, we laughed, and we made it the best damn night I’d had in well over ten years. The next day, we got off the boat and she walked to her car in the parking lot of her new mansion — assuming Truman was right about it all — and I walked to Joey’s beat-up sedan. Truman wouldn’t let me keep the Bureau’s car, and Billy hadn’t finished with mine, so Joey had to play chauffeur for a little while.
I had Joey drop himself off at the bar to clean up and prepare for the week, then I took the car and headed out to my spot on the side of the highway.
I carried the package in the same hand the whole way. It wasn’t heavy — no more than the weight of three Big Macs, according to Joey — but my grip was struggling against the weight anyway. My knuckles were white, my fingers burning with it by the time I reached the circle of rocks and the little hole on the other side of it.
“Hello,” my father said, stepping out from behind the rock.
“Hello,” I answered.
I tossed the brick toward him, the paper wrapping snapping in the wind as it fell at his feet.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Your money,” I said.
“It’s not… it’s your money now, son.”
I shook my head. “It’s your money. You started this whole thing and I got to finish it. I’m out. This is the end.”
“It’s never the end, son. There’s always more —”
“There is always more, Dad. But not for me. Not for us. You take your money and you go buy someone else.”
His face flushed with anger. “I’m not going to stand here and take this —”
I lost my patience about the same time I lost my cool. All the years of taking shit and shoveling it around for this guy. I’d had it. I’d told him so, but I’d never really meant it until now.
“I ain’t asking you to, asshole,” I shouted. “I’m telling you. You find someone else or you retire. Those are your options.”
His nostrils flared. I could see him computing, thinking, just like I do, trying to figure out what game I was playing.
I wasn’t playing a game. I was pissed, and I was done.
“Here’s your money, old man,” I said. “Thirty grand, all cash. Just like you gave it to me. A nice little brick of money, ready to spend. I didn't need it.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I asked in return. “Because I didn’t need it, that’s why? I don’t owe you an —”
“You do owe me at least an explanation, son. Why? What happened?”
“I cleaned up your mess, that’s why. Didn’t need to buy a car, already had the firepower. So I didn’t need it.”
“What about the mortgage on the bar?”
“I’m making money in the bar. I’ll get enough, it’s just a matter of time. But I don’t need to speed things up with your blood money.”
He threw his head back and genuinely laughed. “Is that what this is to you? Blood money? This is dirty money? This is the reason you’re out? Because I didn’t follow the rules?”
“You made the rules, Dad. You made them, and then you broke them.”
“Because I could. I
made the rules, remember?”
“But the rules make it right. The rules are the only thing separating us from the bad guys.”
He was laughing, almost hysterically now, and shaking his head. As if I was the crazy one. As if he had no idea how insane he sounded.
“I’m done, Dad. That’s it. Take the money. I don’t need it anymore.”
He picked it up, making a point of taking his time and staring at me as he did it. He felt it, prodded it, making sure it was what I’d said it was. The weight was right — it had to be, as I hadn’t even touched it since I’d taken it from the box — but I waited there anyway. I wanted to see him accept my resignation. I wanted to make sure I was out. I hated that I needed that from him, but I did.
He sniffed it. Like he could smell the amount of money inside just by his sense of smell. Apparently whatever he smelled convinced him, and he looked up at me with those same eyes I shared with him over the top of the brick of money.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re out.”
I nodded, then turned to leave.
“But this type of work always catches up with you.”
I nodded again, still walking away. I wasn’t going to stop. I wasn’t ever going to stop.
“And you can leave this work, but this work can never leave you.” He paused, and could feel the weight of the next word even before it was breathed into life off his lips.
“Son.”
Afterword
If you liked this book (or even if you hated it…) write a review or rate it. You might not think it makes a difference, but it does.
Besides actual currency (money), the currency of today’s writing world is reviews. Reviews, good or bad, tell other people that an author is worth reading.
As an “indie” author, I need all the help I can get. I’m hoping that since you made it this far into my book, you have some sort of opinion on it.
Would you mind sharing that opinion? It only takes a second.
Nick Thacker
Colorado Springs, CO