by Jeff Shelby
“Your charming personality, no doubt.”
“Man, I have tried to piss off every person that walks in here, hoping they’ll kick me out,” he said, clenching his fists. “They keep telling me how they can’t believe I’ve recovered this fast. And I’m like, I know, sign the goddamn release papers.”
“That famous Carter charm must be working. They love you too much to let you go.”
“Bite me,” he said, shooting me a dirty look. “I want out.” He took a deep breath and dropped back on the pillow. “What’s the story with you and the Ice Queen?”
“I’m not sure you’re in the mood to hear about it,” I said.
He waved his hand around the room. “If I’m gonna have a heart attack, this is as good of a place as any.”
I laughed and started to tell him, but my cell phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out. “Hello?”
“Who’s this?” the voice asked.
“Noah Braddock. Who’re you?”
“Just checking,” he said. “It’s Charlie. I’m calling about your key.”
“Right. What can you tell me?”
“That it’s ready to be picked up, dude,” he said, that hissing-laughing sound making its way out of his throat and through the phone line.
“Great. Did you find out what it belongs to?”
“Um, sir, your key is ready,” he said again. “The cost is one fifty and I’ll be at my desk the rest of the day. I can show you what you need to know.”
I started to ask him again if he knew anything, but the line went dead. I closed up the phone and looked at Carter. “Your buddy, Charlie.”
“What’d he say?”
“That my key’s ready. Wouldn’t tell me if he found anything.”
Carter chuckled. “He’s a little paranoid, Noah. A few irons in the wrong fire, you know? Is he charging you?”
I stood. “For the third time. Said it was going to cost me one fifty to pick up my key.”
“If he’s taking your money, then he knows where to stick that key.”
I walked to the door. “He goddamn better, because if he doesn’t, he’s not gonna like where I’m gonna stick it.”
57
Charlie was in exactly the same pose I’d found him in before. He was in the middle of lighting a cigarette when he saw me coming.
He lifted his chin and blew out a huge puff of smoke. “You made it.”
“You told me it was ready.”
He sucked on the cigarette and brought his feet down off the ledge of his cart. “Yeah, sorry about that. Phones are dangerous, though, man. Never know who’s listening.”
“Right.”
“Fucking government controls everything,” he said, rummaging around in the drawer of the cart. “You think they don’t know exactly what we’re doing every minute of the day?” He tossed his ponytail over his shoulder and grinned sideways at me. “’Specially a guy like me.”
“Sure.”
He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged as if I didn’t understand and he didn’t care either way. He produced a small white envelope from the drawer. “Here it is.”
“What exactly can you tell me, Charlie?” I said, trying to remain patient.
He held the envelope up in his hand, wiggling it as his smile widened, his cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“I’m gonna pay you based on what you tell me,” I said. “You tell me where that key goes, one-fifty’s yours. You tell me nothing, you get nothing.”
He pulled the cigarette from his lips and looked hurt. “Dude, you’re Carter’s friend. I ain’t gonna jack you around. Shit, I was pretty sure I knew where this little girl went when you showed it to me this morning.” He handed over the envelope.
I opened it. It contained the key and a small slip of paper with the number seven scrawled on it. I looked at him.
“Amtrak station,” Charlie said, kicking his toe on the ground. “You know the old depot?”
“Yeah.”
“One of the lockers there,” he said, breathing out the cigarette smoke. “I can’t tell you exactly which locker, but it’ll be one with a seven in the box number. Seventeen, twenty-seven, one-oh-seven, something like that. Look for an empty lock and that baby’ll open it.”
“How do you know it’s a seven?” I asked.
“Has to do with the serial number on the key,” he said, then grinned again. “I could tell you how it all works, but then I’d have to kill you.” When I didn’t laugh, the grin disappeared. “Hey, man, if it doesn’t open a locker there, come back and I’ll give you your money back. Like I said, I ain’t gonna jack around a friend of Carter’s.” He shrugged. “But it’s gonna open one.”
I pulled the money from my wallet and handed it to him. “I believe you. Thanks.”
He shoved the money in his pocket and squeezed the cigarette between his fingers. “Anytime.”
As I walked away, I couldn’t imagine another time that I might need Charlie’s help, but I guessed it wouldn’t hurt to be in with a key guy.
58
The old Santa Fe Depot was downtown, a couple of blocks east of the harbor on Kettner. A Mission-style building with wide arches, built in 1915, it represented the old part of San Diego that seemed to be disappearing with the tremendous growth. It had undergone several renovations and now hosted not only the Amtrak trains that ran the coast, but also the trolley that connected the Mission Valley area with downtown San Diego and the Mexican border.
The station was filled in the early summer evening, primarily with tourists looking to ride out to the stadium or down to Tijuana. The noise of the hustle and bustle echoed off of the hundred-foot ceilings and worn wooden benches.
It took me half an hour of looking before I hit pay dirt. It was the next to last locker bank that I had left to look at. I had looked at seven others in various places in the station, none of them matching the key in my hand.
When I shoved the key in locker fifty-seven, the lock clicked, the key turned, and I opened the small metal door.
A brown paper bag had been squashed into the small, square receptacle, the top of the bag folded and rolled over. I pulled the sack out and nearly dropped it on the floor, its weight surprising me. I gathered the package under my arm and walked over to a nearby bench.
The first thing I saw when I opened the bag was money. Still wrapped in bands. I didn’t count it, but I guessed it to be near the half million Costilla had told me he was missing.
A manila envelope was folded in half, slid in next to the stacks of money. I pulled it out and opened it. A piece of yellow legal paper was folded into quarters.
I unfolded it. I saw Kate’s name signed in the middle of the page, and I froze. My stomach dropped and the hair on my neck stood at attention. I stared at her name for probably five minutes before I read what was above it:
I’m putting this here because I’m in danger. This isn’t my money but I’m taking it. The person that I’ve taken it from won’t miss it, I can promise you that. But it’s not him that I’m afraid of. It’s my husband that I’m afraid of. He doesn’t love me and I don’t love him. We’ve done things to hurt each other, both of us. But I want the marriage to end and he doesn’t. Appearances. So I’m putting this here so it will be safe even if I’m not. If I get out, then no one will ever see this. If I don’t, hopefully someone will figure all of this out.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life—too many, in fact. Ones that have embarrassed me, ones that have embarrassed my family, ones that have screwed up everyone’s lives. I don’t want to do that anymore.
I’m doing something now that I hope will let me start again. Something good and something bad. The something bad is taking this money. The something good is helping to catch the man who this money belongs to. I know this doesn’t make sense, but if you are reading this, then something’s probably happened to me and maybe this does make sense.
I am almost done with what I have to do and then I can escape and start new
. Leave the past behind. There’s nothing good in my past to go back to, so I want to go forward. Only forward. I hope I’m able to do that.
I read the letter three times, a cold knot settling in my gut. Kate had been afraid of Randall. She’d put it on paper, just in case. She’d taken Costilla’s money so she could get the hell away from him and try to rebuild her life.
But the thing that hit me the hardest was that she wanted to leave all of her past behind.
A past that included me.
It could have been Emily telling me that Kate mentioned me on her wedding day. Or perhaps it was Ken’s comment about Kate possibly looking for me. Or maybe it was me getting caught up in years of missing Kate and hoping she’d felt the same.
The letter crushed that hope with the force of a hammer to the chin, and it hurt badly.
A person sliding in beside me startled me. So did the gun in my ribs.
Ramon smiled, sitting at my side. “You’ve found Mr. Costilla’s lost package. He will be very grateful.”
Beyond Ramon, I saw the thick-headed man that had driven me to my meeting with Costilla in Tijuana. The outline of a gun under his shirt was well defined.
“You’ve been following me?” I asked, feeling ridiculously novice.
“Yes,” Ramon said. “From a distance, of course. But, you see, Mr. Costilla, he figured you were the guy to help us. Like he told you.”
I shifted on the bench and felt the gun press harder into my ribs.
Ramon nodded at the letter. “May I?”
I handed it to him. He read it quickly, then handed it back. “I guess I will only need the bag, unless there is anything else in there you need.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to give up the money, but I knew the letter was more important. I wasn’t going to lose another battle with Ramon and his friend.
I felt the gun pull away from my body.
Ramon reached for the bag and slid his gun down to the bench between our bodies so it was hidden. “Mr. Costilla is grateful. He hopes that there are no hard feelings.”
I looked at Ramon. “He didn’t kill her, did he?”
Ramon shook his head sadly. “No, he did not, Mr. Braddock. He told you that. I can see why you wouldn’t believe him. But he didn’t.” He nodded at me. “Good-bye.” He tucked the bag under his arm, and he and the other guy disappeared out the door.
I sat there, my mind reeling. I heard a ringing in the distance as I stared at Kate’s letter in my hands. I looked at the words, not reading them, but wondering how things had gotten so bad for her.
The ringing intensified, and I looked up from the letter, irritated that some idiot didn’t realize his cell phone was ringing.
Then I realized I was the idiot.
I stuck the letter in my pocket and pulled out the phone. “Yeah?”
“We’ve gotta talk,” Randall Tower said.
I stood up, gripping the phone tighter. “Fucking right we do.”
“I need to talk to you,” he said, and I realized he was drunk.
“Where are you?” I asked, heading for the door. “Because I’m coming.”
“Meet me at the gliderport,” he said, his words running together. “We can fly away together.”
I hung up the phone and sprinted to my car.
59
As I weaved in and out of the evening traffic on I-5, I called Liz on my cell.
“Guess what I found?” I said, when she picked up.
“What?”
I told her about the money and the note.
“Do you have it with you?” she asked.
“The note, yeah. The money, no.”
“Where’s the money? In the locker?”
“No, Ramon has it.”
“Who the hell is Ramon?”
“Costilla’s sidekick.”
“Shit.”
I passed a slow-moving van on the right as I flew past Old Town and Presidio Park. “I know. Nothing I could do, though. But you need to see the note.”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “There’s something else you should know though.”
“What?”
“Charlotte Truman’s dead.”
My chest tightened. “What? How?”
“Not sure. After you talked to her, I called a friend in LAPD and asked him to notify me if her name popped up in anything unusual. He just called. They found her in her hotel room.” She paused. “A witness got a license plate leaving the hotel in a hurry.”
“They run it?”
“Yeah, it was rented out of Lindbergh Field. By Randall Tower.”
It was like I saw the punch coming but didn’t bother ducking. “What a fucking surprise that is.”
“Agreed. Where are you right now?”
“On the five, the La Jolla Parkway exit,” I said, trying to block Charlotte’s face from my mind.
“You going to see Carter?”
“No, I’m going to talk to Randall.”
The line buzzed for a moment, and I knew she wasn’t happy. “This isn’t for you to handle.”
“The fuck it isn’t,” I said. “I just got off the phone with the asshole.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. He called me, said we had to meet. And I agreed.”
“You need to wait for me. Or Wellton,” she said. “He was on his way to Westwood to meet with the LA guys about Truman. I can call him on his cell.”
“Randall called me, Liz,” I said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “I’m going to see him. And I’m not waiting. Come if you want, I don’t care. But I’m not waiting.”
“Where are you meeting?” she asked, the aggravation clear in her voice.
“He says he’s up at the gliderport.”
“Noah, don’t do anything until one of us gets there. You got it.”
“Bye,” I said and clicked off the phone.
It rang again five seconds later. I figured it was Liz again, but the caller ID on the phone showed a number I didn’t recognize. I punched the button. “Hello?”
“Dude,” Carter said. “I’m starving. Where’s my dinner?”
“Carter, I’m busy right now,” I said, swinging the Blazer over into the far right lane. “I can’t.”
“What’s going on?”
I told him what I’d found, what Liz found, and where I was headed.
“Wait for Liz,” he said. “If you tear him up, there’s gonna be nothing she can do.”
“The letter’s good enough,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It doesn’t mean shit. Doesn’t mean he killed her.”
“She was afraid of him, Carter,” I yelled into the phone. “She was hiding the money. Charlotte Truman is dead. Ramon told me again that they didn’t kill Kate. I believe him.”
“You believe Costilla’s thug? Come on. You’re not thinking, Noah.”
I fired the phone at the passenger door. I took the La Jolla Village Drive exit and headed toward the Torrey Pines gliderport to find Randall Tower.
60
The gliderport lurked just south of the long fairways of the Torrey Pines Golf Course, a giant clearing amidst the thick trees and ultra-modern buildings of the biotech corridor along Torrey Pines Road. It was a magnificent takeoff spot for the crazies who were into hang gliding, a flat clifftop that abruptly disappeared and sent them shooting out over Black’s Beach, three hundred feet above the Pacific.
I turned down the paved road that ended in a cul-de-sac. Access to the dirt road and parking area was chained off, a sign proclaiming the port closed after eight at night. A blue Ford Taurus was parked next to the sign.
I parked the Blazer behind the Taurus and got out. I blinked several times, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. I shivered into the cool wind that whipped up and off the cliff face, listening to the ocean roar in the distance.
I walked around the empty lot and down the narrow dirt road. I squinted into the night and barely made out a faint light up ahead where I knew the steep
path down to Black’s began. As I got closer, I heard whistling.
Randall was seated on the dirt landing at the top of the stairs, beneath the signs proclaiming the danger of the cliffs and the unstable path, his back to the ocean. A dim, single bulb light barely illuminated the signs, a whistling Randall, about eight empty beer bottles, and one ominous-looking syringe. His light blue oxford was untucked, the left sleeve rolled up above the elbow, and his khakis were wrinkled and dirty at the knees. He didn’t seem to notice that just three feet to his left, the earth disappeared.
He was holding a bottle of Grey Goose in his hand, and he lifted it toward me as a greeting. “Hey, Mister Super Private Detective is here. Woohoo.”
“Yeah, I’m here,” I said, my jaw aching from the clench I’d placed it in since talking to him on the phone.
He made an exaggerated act of looking at his watch. “Well, it’s about time.” He wiggled the vodka bottle in the air. “Can I offer you a drink?”
I kicked the bottle out of his hand, and it went flying down the steep path, shattering somewhere down below. I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him off the ground and to his feet.
“I don’t want a drink, asshole,” I said, jerking him closer so he could see my face. “And I don’t want to share a needle, either. I want to know what you did to Kate.”
His head lolled to one side, no fear on his face, just drunken, strung-out comfort in his glazed-over eyes. “Come on, man. Noah. Buddy.” He smiled, his eyes half open. “Let’s have one last beer together.”
I spun him away from the stairs and threw him to the ground, his body hitting the dirt in front of the stairs like a bag of rocks.
He looked up at me, surprised, then pointed a finger at me. “You are so strong, man.”
The anger erupted inside my chest, and I jumped on him, driving my fist straight down on his nose. It collapsed like a stepped-on snail, and he screamed, his voice echoing out over the water into the dark.