Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  He didn’t like the options that left him.

  “I’ll drive,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They crossed the George Washington Bridge in silence, the gloom of the lower deck matching Swonger’s mood as he brooded in the passenger seat over whom to blame for the face-shaped dent in his precious Scion. That left Gibson to reach back every few minutes and shake Birk, who was definitely concussed, to keep him from falling asleep. The Scion was a two-door, so Birk had to lie sideways across the narrow backseat. Gibson accelerated around a lumbering pickup, and felt the car leap forward powerfully. Swonger had been tinkering under the hood as well.

  The silence held until exit 9 on the Jersey Turnpike.

  “Want my gun back,” Swonger said.

  Gibson ignored him. Swonger folded his arms and waited until exit 6.

  “Where’s my gun?”

  After that it was every exit, like a kid demanding to know if they were there yet. At Baltimore, Gibson relented and told him it was under the seat. Swonger fished around between his legs and cleaned the gun off with the hem of his T-shirt. He popped the magazine and saw it was empty.

  “Where the bullets?”

  “At the bullet store.”

  Swonger thought about it. “This is some unconstitutionality right here. We got amendments.”

  “That’s not what that means.”

  Gibson reached back and shook Birk’s leg again, and Birk raised himself up to see where they were, didn’t recognize anything, and tried to make himself comfortable.

  “One thing I can’t figure out is why . . . ,” Gibson began, articulating a question that had nagged at him since the farm.

  “Why what?” Birk said.

  “Why Merrick would say anything. About pennies. About any of it. I mean, think about it. He went to jail, served his bid, kept his mouth shut for eight years, then all he has to do is drift away quietly. But now, inexplicably, months from release and getting away with it clean, he goes and broadcasts it in a national magazine. I just don’t get it. What’s his angle?”

  “I don’t know why he said it, but he said it,” Birk said.

  “The hubris,” Swonger said, still looking out the window.

  “Hubris?” said Birk.

  “Yeah, man, the hubris. The Greeks were all into that shit. Defiance of the gods. Like my man, Prometheus. Tipped man to fire after Zeus told him to stand down. Zeus was pissed. Chained his disobeying ass to a cold rock and let this giant, crazy bird eat on his liver. But Prometheus is immortal, see? So every night, the liver? It grows back. Next night, that bird’s back, chowing down like it’s his job. Forever, man. That was Prometheus’s punishment: forever. The gods don’t take nothing light, and Prometheus? Prometheus had nothing coming, dog. And the kicker? Prometheus knew it. Knew Zeus would pink-slip his ass, but Prometheus did like he do anyway. Couldn’t help himself. Because of the hubris. Had that hubris real, real bad.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Birk asked.

  Gibson shook his head in amazement. About the last thing he’d have bet on was a dissertation on Greek mythology from Gavin Swonger.

  “Merrick, man, he got the hubris too. Read that interview again. He was busting to tell someone. Thinks he’s smarter than the gods. Thinks he’s all tricksy with his little code words and such. Probably got himself a righteous little Merrick boner over how clever he is. Thinks he’s smart and we’re dumb. But he ain’t. He’s just like my cousin Cole.”

  “Cole-in-prison, Cole?” Birk asked.

  “Cole-in-prison, Cole,” Swonger agreed and turned to Gibson. “So my cousin Cole is serving a ten-spot up at Keen Mountain for armed robbery and assaulting a clerk. ’Cause why? ’Cause after this dumb mook robbed the place, he goes out drinking. Same night. Tells every girl in the joint how he a badass John Dillinger. Well, guess what? Someone dimes him out to the cops. Busted while he’s paying his tab with bills from the robbery. Still had the gun on him too. Know what Cole says to me? He says getting away with it was the easy part. Hard part? Not telling nobody about it.”

  To his surprise, Gibson knew the wisdom of what Swonger said. He remembered when he was a teenager, after hacking Benjamin Lombard and turning the senator’s files over to the press, how he would go online and come within a keystroke of bragging about it in the forums. Not even to hackers he knew well, just randoms he struck up conversations with. He’d get as far as typing, “you know that senator who got hacked?” His finger would hang over the return key until beads of sweat formed on his brow. Common sense stopped him, but there had been some close calls.

  It had been madness, but ego wasn’t afraid of prison. Ego wasn’t afraid of anything accept being ignored. Swonger was right about that much. Gibson only hoped he could make Merrick pay for his.

  “Excepting that Prometheus got eternity,” Swonger said ruefully. “Merrick only got eight years. You believe that? Eight years.”

  “Doesn’t seem like enough, does it?”

  “We got crime and punishment all wrong in this country.”

  “How’s that?”

  Swonger sat up. He’d clearly been thinking about this topic for some time. “Say a mook hold up a liquor store. Say he pockets a couple bills, say he use a gun but don’t fire one shot. If they catch him, he gets ten years in one of the worst places on earth.”

  “Cousin Cole?” Gibson asked.

  “Yeah, cousin Cole. Now take a different mook. This one’s clever. Goes to work on Wall Street and robs thousands of people, but he use a pen and uses every drop of ink in it to ruin lives, steal hundreds of millions. Well, this fella gets eight years, and the prison ain’t even nothing but summer camp.”

  “Guns are dangerous,” Gibson said.

  “And I ain’t saying they ain’t, but why’s that the only basis for punishment?”

  “You got an alternative?”

  “Yeah. Net worth.”

  “Net worth?”

  “Yeah, look here. Cole was broke when he robbed that liquor store. I ain’t saying what he did was right. Cole took what weren’t his. It’s a crime, no doubt. But I get it, know what I mean? Why he did it. Desperation. At least, I comprehend that shit. Now say you worth a hundred million, and you steal another hundred million? Now that shit’s incomprehensible to me. Far as I can see, you a monster with no redeeming value. You belong in solitary for a long, hairy-ass time ’cause you a goddamn menace.”

  “Sentences inversely proportionate to your bank account?”

  “Word. You got more money than God, all the power that come along with it, and you still feel the need to ruin other people’s lives to get more than you could ever spend? Your ass needs to be removed from circulation.”

  “Interesting theory.”

  “I’ve got more.”

  Gibson believed him.

  “So you really think you can get your hands on the money for us?” Birk asked.

  “Let’s get something straight—I don’t work for you, and I don’t owe you anything.”

  Birk started to argue.

  “Let me finish.” Gibson cut him off. “I do owe your uncle something. Everything, actually. So I’m going to go home, get a few things, and head down to West Virginia and see about Merrick’s money. See if I can set things right for your uncle and your family. Don’t know if I can yet, but I have an idea about how it might be done. Will you let me do that?”

  “Sure,” Birk said. “I just want to know what it is.”

  A tricky question because Gibson only half knew himself. His epiphany from the interview was simple: Merrick hadn’t parked his money in a bank somewhere. No, somehow, some way, Merrick’s money was in play. Working. Appreciating. Idle money is wasted money. A direct quote from a Merrick interview in ’04. Gibson had found similar sentiments throughout the man’s public-speaking career.

  Another thing Gibson knew: if Merrick was investing his money, his ego would never allow those investments to be managed by others. Not for the last eight y
ears. In these volatile markets? Not a chance. It also did not seem like something he could do from inside a federal prison. That meant Merrick had a confederate on the outside, someone to mind the store. They’d be in constant contact somehow, and that, ladies and gentlemen, constituted a network. It didn’t matter whether they communicated via smoke signals or encrypted e-mails . . . if Gibson could find it, he could hack it.

  If he could find it.

  And that was his big problem—he couldn’t even start planning the hack until he knew what kind of network Merrick was using. And that would take time, which, with Merrick’s impending release, was not on his side.

  Gibson laid out the situation to Birk and Swonger. To his surprise, they bought it.

  “What do you need from us?” Birk asked.

  “Okay. First thing, you’re going to have to scrape together a bankroll.”

  “I’ve got four thousand dollars,” Birk said, producing a roll of bills wrapped in a rubber band.

  “That’s it?”

  Birk looked hurt. “Unless we sell some of the farm equipment. It’ll take time, but I could raise more.”

  Underfunded and on a clock—things were getting off on stellar footing. Still, Gibson told him to hold off; he didn’t like the idea of crippling the Birks’ farm on a hunch. He gave Birk instructions on setting up an offshore bank account. If they got lucky and Merrick really did have money they could find, then they’d need somewhere to move it.

  Swonger had sat silently stewing, but couldn’t hold his peace any longer. “Ain’t no way I’m riding the bench while you take our money.”

  That wasn’t exactly a surprise to Gibson. A thought occurred to him. A horrible one, but it might be a solution. Take Swonger with him to West Virginia. Christ, were there really no alternatives? He glanced over at Swonger, who was eying him suspiciously. Well, at least this way he’d see him coming. Keep his enemy closer, isn’t that how it went?

  “If we go together . . . you think you can behave yourself? Let me handle things?”

  “Long as you do like you say you will. I’ll let you do your thing.”

  “All right, then,” Gibson said.

  “What about me?” Birk asked.

  “I’ll take you as far as Union Station. After that, you’re riding the rails.”

  Birk began feebly to protest.

  “Or the bus, I don’t really give a damn. Look, this isn’t a package deal. One of you can tag along. The other one goes back to the farm and looks after the judge.”

  “What? I’m supposed to go babysit the old man?” Birk said.

  “Yeah. Between now and when I find that money, Hammond Birk better be living like a damn king. You know what that means?”

  “What?”

  “It means every day is bath day.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Scion pulled into the parking lot of Gibson’s building in the late afternoon. Gibson didn’t plan on staying long; he needed to make arrangements to be gone for a few weeks. He wanted to get down to Niobe, West Virginia, and take the lay of the land. Merrick had twenty-three days left on his sentence, and Gibson would need every minute of every day if he were to have a chance of pulling this off.

  “Make yourself at home,” Gibson said, flipping on a light switch.

  Swonger looked around. “Damn. How you living?”

  Gibson shrugged, realizing that Swonger was the first person that he’d let see his place. A depressing thought all on its own. He knew his apartment was bare bones. He’d moved in after the separation and never expected to stay this long, buying used or broken furniture on Craigslist and refurbishing it. Nothing hung on the walls. No decorations or plants. It kept him dry when it rained. That was the best you could say for it.

  “Did Goodwill charge you for any of this stuff?” Swonger shook his head. “They got more comfortable chairs in the joint.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “No, man. Respect. Take a special kinda guy to live like a bum but still act like a condescending prick all the time.” Swonger opened the nearly empty refrigerator. “I think someone broke in and robbed your icebox.”

  Gibson handed him a spare set of keys.

  “There’s a grocery store a couple blocks north if you’re hungry. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

  “Where you going?”

  “See my kid. That okay with you?”

  “Yeah, it’s cool. Wait . . .” Swonger was looking around with mounting panic. “You don’t have no TV.”

  “You want a book?”

  “You killing me, man.”

  “Well, if you get bored, you can follow me around some.”

  “Nah, I’ll give you the night off. Good faith, right?”

  Right.

  Gibson picked Ellie up from her after-school program and took her to a movie. A revival house in Ashburn was showing Finding Nemo. It was Ellie’s all-time number-one movie. A bold statement for a seven-year-old, but she’d watched it until she’d worn a hole in the DVD. She was too young to have seen it on the big screen, and Gibson figured it was a safe bet after the baseball-game fiasco. Dory was her favorite character—a fitting role model for his easily distracted daughter. “I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Squishy!” she screamed happily at the screen. Ellie was still mastering the concept that you had to sit quietly at the movies. Fortunately, it was a quote-along, so audience participation was encouraged. Pretty soon Gibson was laughing and calling out lines right along with her.

  After the movie, he drove them to the Nighthawk, where they split a deluxe banana split—one scoop each of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry; banana; whipped cream; chocolate syrup; nuts; pineapple; strawberries; and three cherries. Toby Kalpar delivered the towering pièce de résistance personally. Ellie was going to be in a sugar coma for a week. Gibson gestured for Toby to sit and watched his friend fold his tall, thin frame into the booth beside Ellie. Toby and Sana treated Ellie as if she were their own grandchild, and she was starting to think she owned the place. Ellie bounced up and down in her seat in anticipation.

  “Where’s Ellie?” Toby asked, looking back and forth blankly. “I brought ice cream.”

  Ellie giggled and made an exasperated face. “I’m right here!”

  “It’s too bad. I guess we’ll have to eat it ourselves.” Toby pulled the banana split toward him and aimed a marauding spoon at it.

  “Guess so,” Gibson agreed, reaching for the other spoon.

  Ellie shrieked.

  Toby clutched his chest in shock. “Where did you come from?”

  “I was right here!” she said. “Dad! Tell him.”

  Toby smiled and presented Ellie with a spoon, which she snatched like she’d just negotiated the end of a hunger strike. No one was ever going to mistake his daughter for shy.

  “What do you say, El?” Gibson said.

  Ellie managed a muffled “Thank you” a millisecond before she wedged a fist-size spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, tipping her head back to keep it from running down her chin.

  “El . . . No Bruce the Shark, okay? Regular bites.”

  “Yeash, Dahbd,” she managed.

  After a few bites, Ellie stopped and offered Toby her spoon.

  He smiled and tousled her hair. “I’ve already had mine today.”

  “You are so lucky,” she told him. “I want a diner like this one when I grow up.”

  Toby beamed at that. “Doesn’t fall far from the tree, this one.”

  Diners had been hallowed ground to Gibson’s father, and they had in turn become hallowed to Gibson. As he got older, he was realizing that he hadn’t fallen far from the tree himself. Those things that his father had cherished, he found growing in significance in his own life. Being able to make peace with his father’s death had only accelerated the process. Did he even love diners at all, or did he just like the way they made him feel because they reminded him of his dad? Could he even separate the two at this point? He wondered what he
would pass on to Ellie that she would one day mistake for her own. Would he give himself the chance to find out?

  While Ellie inhaled the rest of the banana split, Gibson caught up with Toby, whose daughter, Maissa, a graphic designer living in Palo Alto, had been laid off in a wave of corporate restructuring. Toby was worried about her. Sana was more circumspect about it, which made Toby worry all the more. There was no new news. Maissa was job hunting, and Toby wasn’t sleeping. Sana was about ready to banish him to the couch because he was keeping her up too. Gibson had seen Maissa’s work; it was very good. He couldn’t imagine she would stay unemployed for long, but telling that to Mr. Anxiety was a lost cause.

  Gibson worked up the nerve to say what needed saying. He wanted to test saying it out loud to Toby. See how his friend reacted. He lifted his cap off his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “I took a job.”

  Toby, busy making faces at Ellie, began to congratulate him, but something in Gibson’s tone stopped him. Toby stared levelly at him. Although his friend wore glasses, there was nothing wrong with Toby’s vision.

  “What kind of job? Like before?” Toby didn’t know the half of what Gibson had done to find Suzanne Lombard, but he knew enough to be wary.

  “No, different. I’m just looking into something for someone,” Gibson said, trying to keep the note of apology out of his voice.

  “Oh, something for someone. Foolish of me not to have guessed. When will you start to do something for yourself?” Toby’s eyes narrowed. “Is it the same people?”

  Gibson shook his head. “No, it’s just a little job. Might not be anything. I’ll probably be back in a couple of days.”

  “Have you told Nicole?”

  “I’m not married to Nicole anymore.”

  Ellie glanced up at her father. He winced and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, but his daughter set down her spoon and looked away.