Hope Never Dies

by Andrew Shaffer

  I hope this letter finds you well.

  Things are not going so good on my end. In January, Darlene had a stroke. She is over at Baptist Manor. We do not know if she will recover. All I want to do is bring her home. As you can imagine the costs involved are more than we can afford. This is not to excuse my actions, because there is no excuse.

  I met some men one morning at Waffle Depot, who told me, “How would you like to make some extra money.” I said, “What do I have to do.” They said, “Take this bag with you to DC and give it to somebody.” I asked what is in the bag, they said “Do you want the money or not.”

  I knew the men were drug dealers. Still I said, “Yes.”

  The first couple of runs went fine. The money was good. I didn’t open the bags, but I had an idea what was in them. We (Amtrak conductors) got a notice to be on the lookout for increased trafficking. Specifically “opioids.” Agencies were doing stings on the interstate, and the DEA thought dealers might try alternate routes. I had to laugh at that one, because the DEA was a little late to the party.

  Last week, my daughter tells me a girl in her dorm overdosed on heroin. “I thought only junkies overdosed,” I said. This girl was a college kid at Georgetown. On the volleyball team. Good grades.

  She lived. The next might not.

  I never opened the bags, so I can’t say for sure what I was transporting. But it wasn’t marijuana. The dealers were paying me too much to move a little pot.

  There is a black duffel bag in lost and found at the station in Baltimore. I told the man at the counter someone left it in the men’s room. I think they believed me. The perks of wearing a uniform!

  The drug dealers are in a motorcycle group. “The Murder Town Marauders.” I do not know their real names, but the one guy who gave me the bags and the money calls himself “Texas.”

  I do not know what the men are going to do when they find out I didn’t deliver the bag. The men say they are being protected by the police, so I cannot go to them. I do not know if I can trust other government agencies. You are the only one I can trust right now who might be able to help me.

  Your friend,

  Finn Donnelly

  P.S. I am sorry. Give my best to Dr. Biden.

  The lost-and-found employee finally returned. He was holding a black duffel bag. Instead of being relieved, my heart sped up. I could feel sweat forming on my brow.

  It was real. It was suddenly all too real.

  “Is this it?” he asked.

  I had no way of knowing. It was black, and it was a duffel bag. It would have to do.

  “That looks like it,” I said. I tried to smile like I’d just been reunited with a long-lost friend. I suppose it was true, in a way.

  The kid heaved it onto the counter with a huff. He reminded me that, in the future, I might want to place a luggage tag on my bags. I said I’d keep it in mind, and reached for the bag.

  “Wait,” he said, slapping his forehead. “I forgot to have you identify what’s in the bag. I’m so sorry, Mr. Vice President.”

  I kept my grin up, but inwardly was hitting the panic button. “What’s in the bag?”

  “I know it sounds stupid, that you’d want to take someone else’s old gym clothes,” he said. “I trust you, go ahead and take it. But you can’t be too careful these days, especially after 9/11.” He whispered the date like it was a naughty word. “Just so you know, we go through everything that’s brought in—not to be nosy, just to be safe. You might want to make sure everything’s in there. Sometimes things get misplaced.”

  The kid didn’t look old enough to remember how lax security had been before September 11, but I let it slide. “I’m sure all of my…old gym clothes…are in there,” I said, taking the bag off the counter. It wasn’t much heavier than a bag of gym clothes. Could there really be enough drugs in it to be worth killing someone over?

  Nobody stopped me as I crossed the concourse. Nobody swarmed in with guns drawn and told me to drop the bag and get on the ground. Still, I lowered my head and quickened my pace until I reached the men’s room.

  Inside a locked stall, I set the bag on the back of the toilet. There was piss all over the seat. I’d never understand how some men couldn’t aim their pistols. Half of ‘em probably had handguns at home, too—a terrifying prospect.

  I unzipped the duffel bag quickly, like I was tearing off a Band-Aid. I knew there was no reason to draw things out. It wasn’t going to change what was inside.

  I breathed deep and looked.

  Sneakers.

  A couple of T-shirts.

  A pair of shorts.

  A Monster energy drink.

  That was it.

  I rifled through the bag, feeling for a false bottom or hidden compartments. Nothing. Finn had given me one job, and in the end I’d failed him. Taylor and his biker buddies had been searching for the bag all week—in Darlene’s room at Baptist Manor, at the Donnellys’ home in Riverside. Had they beat me here?

  I stuffed everything back in the bag. I could return to the lost-and-found counter later, when somebody else was working. See if there was another black duffel bag. Damn you, Finn, I thought. I knew why he hadn’t left his name and address inside the bag, but he could have done something. Of course, it was futile to get upset with him. He’d been working with what he had. He hadn’t planned this out. He’d been acting impulsively. I could hear Jill’s voice in my head: Now who does that remind you of, Joe?

  Wait.

  I pulled the energy drink out again. Finn and I might have both been impulsive, but we both had something else in common: we didn’t drink alcohol…and we didn’t drink caffeine. The likelihood of Finn buying one of these highfalutin beverages was zero to zilch.

  I popped the tab. Though the drink was supposed to be carbonated, there was no release of air. The can weighed about the same as it would if it were filled with liquid, but there wasn’t any liquid inside. Instead, there was a plastic bag, packed with bright-white powder and taped up tight. Good night, nurse.

  46

  I boarded the Acela and took my seat. I’d bought a one-way return ticket on the faster train because I needed to get back to Wilmington as quickly as possible, and there was no faster train in the United States than the Acela. I was back in first class, where there would be less of a chance of talking about my grandkids. People don’t pay first-class prices to talk about their families. It wasn’t that I’d exhausted the topic—far from it. But it was impossible to think about anything other than the duffel bag in the overhead compartment.

  I’d debated calling someone from inside the station, but I couldn’t think of a single person eager to help me. Lieutenant Esposito was in charge of the investigation…or she had been, until she’d told me the books were basically closed. What I’d handed Dan last night should have been enough to reopen the case, although there was a chance he’d shuffled it over to the narcotics division. The DEA was involved. What their angle was is anyone’s guess.

  All of this was complicated by the fact that the Marauders alleged they had help from inside the Wilmington PD. I sure hoped this was a bluff. As much as I personally disliked Esposito, she was a good cop. The thought of her or anyone in the department being corrupt was difficult to stomach. Some of my biggest and most loyal supporters work in law enforcement—and I believe they have some of the toughest jobs in this country. But I also believe they’re not infallible. None of us are. Not me, not Barack.

  Well, maybe Barack.

  He would know exactly what to do. Exactly who to contact. As much as it infuriated me sometimes, Barack could always be counted on to have the right answer.

  I looked out the window as the train beside us pulled out in the opposite direction. I felt the medal in my pocket. Had I really spoken to Barack Obama for the last time in my life? It didn’t seem possible, yet there wasn’t any other way to
interpret how we’d parted ways. Neither of us had said “goodbye,” but it had been a goodbye all the same.

  “Is this seat taken?” a man asked, hovering in the aisle beside me.

  Without looking up, I motioned that the seat across the table was free.

  “Thanks,” the man said, sliding into the padded chair.

  It was Dan Capriotti.

  His appearance on the train was so unexpected, I was having trouble forming thoughts, let alone words.

  “Lift your shirt,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  He moved his jacket to the side to show the butt of his pistol. “You heard me. Lift your shirt.”

  The first-class cabin was filling quickly. I waited for the attendant to pass us, and then I leaned in close to Dan. “I’m not armed,” I whispered.

  “Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be, Joe.”

  I sighed, and looked around. When I was certain there weren’t any prying eyes, I flashed Dan my naked gut for half a second. “Happy?”

  “Now your backside,” he snapped.

  I turned around in my seat and showed off my lower back. “I think there’s been some misunderstanding. The bag isn’t mine. I was—”

  He put a finger to his lips as another passenger scooted past. There were dark circles under Dan’s eyes, like he hadn’t slept well last night. Or at all. Had the department had me under surveillance? Regardless, he’d caught me red-handed with the duffel bag.

  “There’s a letter,” I said in a hushed tone. “It explains everything.”

  He glanced around. There were no other police around, unless they were plainclothes like Dan.

  “Let’s see it,” he said wearily.

  I dug it out of my pocket. “It’s from Finn.”

  He put on a pair of reading glasses and scanned the letter, front and back. The engineer blew the whistle, and the train slowly pulled out of the station. There were several open seats in first class, including one across the aisle from us. I didn’t know if the relative privacy decreased or increased my anxiety.

  “He mailed this to you?” Dan asked.

  “The envelope’s at home. It was postmarked in Maryland. The date was smudged, but it showed up either Friday or Saturday. I didn’t see it until this morning, or else I’d have told you about it sooner.”

  He returned his glasses to inside his jacket. “You could have saved yourself the round trip and called and told me this morning.”

  “I could have,” I conceded. “Lucky for you, you happened to be in Baltimore this morning.”

  “It wasn’t luck. I followed you here.”

  “Because you suspected me of something.”

  “Because I knew you weren’t finished playing cops and robbers.”

  The first-class attendant interrupted us with a smile, and dropped a couple menus on our table. It was another new hire. I didn’t recognize her, and I didn’t introduce myself. She moved on to the next row.

  The train was winding out of town at thirty-five, forty miles per hour. The Acela wouldn’t hit its maximum speed of a hundred and fifty until later on, and only for a couple of short stretches of track. There were too many twists, too many turns. I’d always wanted to take a high-speed train out west, where there was enough room to really fly.

  “You know why they call Delaware the Diamond State?” Dan asked.

  “Thomas Jefferson,” I said. “He called the state a ‘jewel,’ because of its prime location on the eastern seaboard.”

  “It’s also a prime location for drug trafficking. Delaware’s on a direct route between New York City and DC, with Philly and Baltimore along the way. I-95 was practically paved with illegal drugs, until the DEA started cracking down.”

  I knew all of this. We were in the midst of a public health crisis that had already proven more lethal than the crack cocaine epidemic of the eighties.

  “The Marauders worked out a pretty decent plan,” I said. “Finn had the inside track, so to speak. But the bad guys didn’t count on one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Finn Donnelly had a conscience.”

  “You believe all this?” Dan said, waving the letter.

  “What other explanation is there?”

  “Maybe he didn’t feel he was getting paid what he deserved. Maybe he wanted a bigger piece of the pie.”

  “And then he decided to tell me about it?” I said. “No. That doesn’t make any sense. Not unless you think Finn and I were in cahoots.”

  “Were you?”

  “How long have we known each other, Dan? I can’t believe you’d even ask that.”

  “You’re telling me that when you read this letter, you didn’t wonder if I was the one protecting the Marauders? Not even for a second?”

  “It may have crossed my mind, but—”

  “Relax,” he said. “I’m just messing with you. Had to ask, though.”

  My blood pressure was returning to normal. Or what passed for normal these days. “So what happens now?”

  “The way I see it, I turn this paper over to my boss, who’s been working with the DEA. Your friend’s name gets dragged through the mud. Your name gets dragged through the mud. Everybody loses. But that’s life, right?”

  He paused to gauge my reaction. I didn’t have one.

  “Or there’s a second option,” he continued, his voice low. “We forget about this letter. Your friend can rest quietly. No one ever learns about his trafficking scheme. And, most importantly, you walk away clean.”

  “The bag,” I said. “What about the bag?”

  Dan shrugged. “I’ll turn it in anonymously, like one of those babies left on church doorsteps.”

  “Don’t you need it to convict Taylor Brownsford?”

  The attendant stopped for our lunch orders, but neither of us were hungry. Dan watched her walk away and then turned back to me. “Taylor’s dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “I had to re-cuff his hands behind his back, you know. His hands were free for half a second, and he went for my gun. There was a struggle. The gun went off.” Dan paused. “There was no way he was going to turn state’s witness and rat his brothers out. If an outlaw biker flips, he’s as good as dead.”

  I took off my sunglasses and rubbed between my eyes. My headache from yesterday was coming back.

  “Everything all right, Joe?”

  “I’d rather we went with the first option, that’s all,” I said, replacing my glasses. “I know there will be fallout from the letter, but I can handle it. Whatever happens, happens. What’s important is getting the truth out there. I couldn’t live with myself if I had to keep the letter from his daughter. She deserves to know what happened.”

  “If that’s your only objection, we can let her know.”

  “There’s this old joke. Two Irishmen are talking. One has a bag of donuts. He tells the other, ‘If you can guess how many donuts are in my bag, you can have them both.’”

  I waited for Dan to laugh, but apparently he’d heard that one before.

  I continued, “What I’m trying to say is, the Irish aren’t known for keeping secrets. We like to talk, and I can’t guarantee the truth wouldn’t just slip out of me at some point. So let’s get everything logged as evidence. I’ll go on the record. Whatever you need me to do.”

  Dan stashed the letter in his jacket. “You’re right. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

  “Offend me?”

  “I know you’re all about doing the right thing. I’m just trying to look out for you, that’s all.”

  “I appreciate it. Don’t get me wrong, I really do appreciate it. It’s tempting to just forget about this letter. It would make my life easier. Lord knows, it would make your life easier too, I’d bet.”

  He shrugged. “Paperwork’s
part of the job.”

  “Still, this thing is going to blow up. Whoever’s covering for the Marauders down at the station isn’t going to be happy. There might be a target on your back.”

  “You handle yourself. I handle myself.” He glanced around the cabin, then leaned across the table. “Say, did you open the bag? Is it all there?”

  “There’s something there. Whether it’s all of it or not, I don’t know. Looked like a pound or two, sealed up.”

  “It’s good you didn’t touch it. Fentanyl is dangerous stuff. Touch it without rubber gloves, and it can kill you.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “Fentanyl?”

  “A synthetic opioid. Dealers cut heroin with it to increase the potency. Fentanyl is fifty times more powerful than heroin. That’s why you can fit over a million dollars’ worth into a Monster can.”

  Fentanyl. Of course. Regular heroin was passé. Kids today wanted heroin as extreme as their energy drinks.

  Energy drinks…

  I hadn’t told Dan about the energy drink. There was a slim chance he’d gotten the detail from Taylor, but Dan had said Taylor wasn’t going to sing. Dan might have known traffickers used vacuum-sealed packages hidden in cans…but there was only one way Dan could have known the brand. My left leg was bouncing under the table like a Jack Russell terrier. The first-class attendant was a few rows away, pushing a cart.

  “Everything okay, Joe?” Dan asked.

  The room was spinning around me. “Stomach’s just a little upset. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Don’t let me stop you,” he said, gesturing to the aisle. “I’m getting a drink. You want a Sprite or something?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll manage,” I said, heading for the restroom at the end of the car. I didn’t look over my shoulder, but I knew that Dan was watching my every move. The train was just about halfway to our destination, humming along at over a hundred miles per hour on the open track. In approximately twenty minutes, we would pull into Wilmington Station. Once the doors opened, Dan would step off…and I knew that I’d never see that duffel bag or letter again.