DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3)

by T. J. Brearton

  “Philip,” she said. “I want to thank you for your candor. In return, I’m going to be frank, too. Please know that I understand your concerns. Your fears. But I can help you. The escort you were with, about seven years ago now, you know Danice was not her real name. Her name was Rebecca Heilshorn.”

  Largo’s face drained of blood. He looked like he was going to be sick. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he said in a small voice.

  “Please, Philip. I know this is hard. For a while, through Oneida County’s investigation, it was believed Rebecca didn’t find her way into the business until later, coerced by a woman named Olivia Jane, but it seems like she was positioned quite early on. Maybe even starting with you.”

  He shook his head, with his eyes closed. He gripped the chair. His knuckles were white, and she was reminded of flying into Rikers, her trepidation at facing Brendan Healy.

  “I can’t . . .” he said. He was about to get up and leave.

  “The detective on Rebecca’s murder,” she hurried, “Brendan Healy. I believe he knows, because during the investigation he encountered Rebecca’s personal driver. The one who probably brought her to the hotel you were staying in that night, picked her up the next day. Eddie Stemp.”

  Largo opened his eyes. His expression hardened. “I agreed to see you, Agent Aiken, because I couldn’t just sit here anymore. But, you’re not thinking about the cost. You’re not seeing the whole picture. It’s not just my reputation, for God’s sake. They wanted me gone — Alexander Heilshorn wanted me gone — Titan wanted me gone, and to stay gone, and to sit here, and to suffer. Because I opposed him.” He leaned towards her, dropping his head.

  Bent over like that, Largo muttered something. “There’s a disc.”

  “What, Philip? What do you mean?”

  “There’s a disc,” he said. He raised his head. His face was one of terror, after many years of fear settling in and making a home in the soul. “A compilation, ten years’ worth, or so, of Titan’s backdoor deals, along with just about every other piece of political malfeasance you can think of. A kind of bottom-up monitoring of government.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Argon.”

  “Seamus Argon?” She remembered Brendan telling her he’d first become interested in Philip Largo while investigating Argon’s death.

  Largo nodded. “We talked. Just before he died.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Largo sat back, and his chest expanded with a deep breath. He blew out the air forcibly, and wiped at his eyes as he composed himself. “He said that this was all going to be over soon. That everything was going to come out, at last.”

  She took this in, and then asked. “Where is that disc now?”

  But Philip Largo just looked at her with his sad eyes. He didn’t know.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN / THURSDAY, 11:11 AM

  In summer Laurel Grove was as pretty as a picture, Staryles thought. White limestone radiated calm and cool. As lazy June summer days came to an end, nothing was more languorous than the atmosphere on the retirement home campus. He could just sense it as he drove into the parking lot in his dark blue Oldsmobile Cutlass.

  As he popped the trunk of the car, his feelings were confirmed when a nurse — or orderly, or personal care giver, whatever they were called — came rolling an old-timer out at a snail’s pace. Staryles exited the vehicle, went around to the trunk and pulled out a small duffel bag. He headed to the front entrance.

  The nurse smiled and the old timer — a white man with even whiter hair, and veins and liver spots showing through his parchment skin — waved a knobby hand as Staryles approached. Staryles waved back. There was no hurly-burly here, no urgency. The dusty summer air, the stillness of the maple trees by the river, the ease of the low Hudson itself, Pepsi-colored water purling unhurriedly down towards the city.

  Staryles passed the nurse and the old timer (bet that corn husk saw the beaches of the Pacific or Normandy so close and personal he could count the grains of sand) and reached the entrance. The automatic doors swung inward, inviting him in.

  He stepped into a vestibule with a bank of locked brass mailboxes, and then to a second set of doors. Lettering on the glass declared that These Doors Are Locked 7 PM to 7 AM.

  But they swung open now, friendly and welcoming. Laurel Grove was not some squat concrete building with a few fake plants in the lobby in some rundown district of town. Laurel Grove was top-notch and pricey.

  But their security sucked.

  Staryles maintained his leisurely pace, admiring the plants — not fake — which decorated the front lobby, the low benches that were sort of Art Deco with cushions, the mosaic stone walls with their shining specks of mica.

  The front-desk nurse smiled at him and he smiled back. He noticed how her eyes dropped to his clothes. No suit today, but a pair of M3 Safari designer jeans, a vintage-fit white t-shirt from Hugo Boss, and a pair of sandals Christ himself would envy.

  For just a second he felt a pinch in his gut at the blasphemy, and almost lost his smile. But then he watched how the nurse’s eyes lingered on him — it was only a second, barely a second, but that was all it took — and he regained his full presence.

  “Hello,” he said in a voice which he’d carefully cultivated, even practiced during morning sit-ups. He set down his bag.

  “Hello,” she said back, failing utterly to hide the fact that she was single and found him intriguing, if a little intimidating. The usual.

  “Here to see Philomena Argon,” he said.

  “Oh wonderful,” she chirped, and then something in her changed. Her smile faded and her eyes grew suspicious. It was happening again, this metamorphosis which occurred in people whenever he got close.

  As she gathered up the log book, he turned away. He decided it was less pleasant in here than he had first thought. It was more like some smug Ivy League library, or some fancy home where the uppity rich wife never lets the kids touch anything. It was stuffy in here.

  “Here you go, just sign in right here and I’ll page the home worker to bring you in.”

  Mmpf. Staryles thought. A home worker. The term was nonsensical.

  But he didn’t share this insight. Instead he gave the nurse behind the desk another full-veneer smile and bent forward over the log book.

  The front-desk lady turned away, giving Staryles a chance to fan the pages of the logbook. He already knew Healy had been here. Seven months previously, late November, Healy had stood right here, right at this desk. But he just wanted to see. When he had flipped to the appropriate date he scanned the page. Sure enough, there was Healy’s scrawl. Staryles felt a small thrill and sense of self-satisfaction. He would have made a good detective himself, if he weren’t in such high demand for a different vocation.

  He quickly returned to today’s page, signed and turned the book around to face the nurse who stood up and took it without so much as a glance at it. She put it back beneath the countertop, gave him one more fake smile and then turned her shoulder to him as she went back to whatever she was doing on the computer. Probably Facebook, or Pinterest.

  These women. The same thing kept happening. They didn’t recognize him. Didn’t seem him for who he truly was, what he really could do.

  He looked through the glass doors. The nurse pushing the old-timer in the wheelchair had only just made it to the end of the front walk, heading towards some elm trees where there was a picnic table.

  The picnic table sparked a memory of a family picnic, the only one they had ever had as far as he could remember. His father had lectured the young boys about how the nation was founded on the family structure, with the father meting out proper discipline and punishment. It’s the mother’s job to bear children and nurse them, he’d said, the father’s job to straighten the spine.

  Their mother had not been happy with the conversation. Staryles remembered how she had looked as if she’d rather be anywhere other than sitting with her husband and these three boys
she had somehow rented a womb to for nine months a piece, only to lose them to the father the moment they’d dropped off the nipple. His mother’s face haunted the expressions of the women he encountered.

  “Sir?”

  Staryles snapped to attention, his spine rigid, his hands ready. Within the span of a breath, however, he caught hold of himself and turned on a smile.

  “All set for you, sir,” said the home worker who’d come to escort him.

  “Great,” he said, slipping the strap of his duffel bag over his shoulder.

  They walked down the hallway together.

  * * *

  Philomena Argon was in her room. Everything was exactly the way it had been the last time Staryles had seen it. The quaint furniture, the framed picture of her parents in their Scottish getups. The roll-top desk, not so unlike the roll-top desk Olivia Jane had kept in her house. Stupid Olivia Jane. Unable to keep her mouth shut in the end.

  Mena sat quietly at the edge of her bed, watching Staryles as he softly closed the door behind him.

  He walked across the room and squatted in front of her, relishing the way his thigh muscles felt taut and ropy, the way his spine was straight as a board.

  “Hi, Mena. I thought we’d talk a little bit. I was wondering if you knew the story of King Midas.” He looked at her, perhaps the way his father had looked at his mother that day. His mother hadn’t been around for long after that picnic. “It’s a good story. The god Apollo calls King Midas an ass and touches him and gives Midas the ears of a donkey.”

  He searched her foggy eyes. It was hard to say, but he felt like she was emanating a little hatred towards him.

  “Midas is embarrassed — I can only imagine — and covers up the ears with a huge hat. But guess who knows about the ears? His barber. Those town barbers have all the juicy secrets. Midas warns the barber never to speak of it or he’ll be beheaded. But the barber is just exploding with this intel, he’s just bursting.”

  Staryles looked around the room, out the window, and then back at Philomena. He opened his bag and took out a pair of black gloves.

  “So you know what he does? He runs out and digs a hole in the bank of the Pactolus River, checks to make sure no one is around, and then whispers the secret about Midas’ ass-ears into the hole. Boom, done, got it out of his system. So he fills up the hole and leaves. But, Mena, the next spring, the reeds sprout. One grows up from the hole, and it whispers to the other reeds. The reeds tell the insects, and the insects tell the birds, and a bird lands on Midas’ window. Guess what? The bird declares that Midas has the ears of a donkey hidden beneath his Phrygian cap. And so you can imagine what happened then.”

  Staryles reached into the bag and took out a small vial of white powder. He cocked his head to the side and licked his lips, just a quick dart of the tongue.

  “You’re kind of a blabbermouth, Mena. Let’s face it. Kind of a barber-type. It’s people like you that make regs what they are — who make security have to be as tight as it is.”

  Staryles brought his gloved hand an inch from her skin and feathered his fingertips down the side of her sagging face. His eyebrows knitted together in mock compassion.

  “See? Your admonishment was poetic justice, I’ll give them that. You can’t talk because of your stroke. But I’m the next generation. I don’t have that sense of mercy, Mena. No stroke for you this time.”

  He looked out the window again, his face a carefully built expression of serious contemplation. He practiced this face in reflective surfaces; he wished he could see himself now, but the room was gloomy and the day bright outside. No reflection.

  He took the vial of thallus sulfate and tapped it against his thigh, cutting his gaze back over to her. Her eyes, milky with glaucoma but still intelligent, dropped to glance at the vial, then met his stare.

  They remained like that for a few moments, Staryles squatting and looking directly into her eyes, Philomena looking right back.

  Then he spoke, “Where is it, Mena? Is it in your room here somewhere?”

  She mumbled something unintelligible. He got up and sat down on the bed beside her. It was a soft mattress, way too soft for his tastes. He cupped his free hand around his ear. “What’s that, Mena?” He pulled the hand away and then tilted his head to the side. “Did you give it to your brother? Is that what you did? You’ve been sitting on that IMF data, like a hen on an egg, for a long time.” He clucked his tongue, and shook his head with parental disappointment.

  She said something again. It sounded like there was some suction in her mouth, like she was at a dentist with that tube hanging from her lips. Was she playing dumb? Surely she could speak better. Her muscle memory had to have come back somewhat after all these years.

  “Because I wonder,” Staryles said, lifting the vial to his face. He tapped the tip of it against his jutting chin and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I wonder if Lawrence Taber, that old son of a gun, if when he sent Brendan Healy down here last year to look for something . . . I wonder if he was hoping Seamus Argon had taken all your hard work, and stashed it somewhere.” His eyes found her again. “You think?”

  This time she made no effort to speak. Staryles pursed his lips and puffed his cheeks out like a chipmunk, then blew through his lips. He sucked air in through his teeth and then stood upright. He turned his head to look back out the window. “Yeah. That’s what I think, too.” He considered things for a moment, striking a thoughtful pose, gazing into the rolling green yard outside. Sun dazzled the chrome and plastic of the vehicles in the parking lot. The nurse pushing the old man in the wheelchair was off to the left, turning back this way.

  It was so quiet here. So peaceful and still. You could lose all sense of time, really. There wasn’t even a television in Philomena’s room, or a computer, nothing. How did she stay in touch? He looked at her. This woman who had once been plugged right into the very heart of it. Secrets swarming around her like a vortex.

  Secrets necessary to keep people safe? Staryles wasn’t so naïve. Midas should’ve just come out with his ears instead of burying his secret beneath that ridiculous cap. Because soon the reeds would know, and the insects would know, and the birds would know.

  Philomena was like the barber. Lawrence Taber was one of the birds. You could hardly blame the bird, really. But you could — and you should — behead the barber.

  He sat shoulder to shoulder with her and carefully unscrewed the vial. It would be an hour or so before anyone even checked on her and he would be long gone. With her failing health, Mena wouldn’t last as long as the others. A few hours of necrosis, maybe one night, and her heart would give out.

  “Philomena,” he said in his best stern-but-warm voice, “if you have it here, tell me. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I know where it is, anyway.”

  A nerve fired beneath his eye. He felt it, and it triggered a flare of anger. He brought the vial up to her lips. He expected her to start babbling, to cry for help, but she was motionless and silent. She actually turned her head away. He followed her gaze and together they looked out the window.

  She remained silent, and he pressed his fingers against her cheeks and forced open her mouth. Her skin felt as thin as tissue paper, her lips parted easily, as if she didn’t care. He felt her slump against him, the two of them watching that still, unmolested world through the glass.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN / THREE MONTHS AGO

  By the time Louis Tremont finished his time at Rikers Island, he had dropped twenty-six pounds. Brendan could imagine the man he once was. He saw Tremont sitting in a boxy old Crown Vic outside of a Manhattan bank, casing the joint for access points and timing the rotation of the security staff. A younger Tremont, fit, top of his game, the world as his piggy bank. He’d smoked cigars in those days, he said, so Brendan pictured the younger Tremont puffing on a Rocky Patel as he watched the bank like a predator.

  It was a Sunday, a quiet day in the West Facility, when Tremont offered the final piece of information Brendan needed. It had nothing
to do with the channeling of drugs through the jail system. He was folding his spare set of sheets; Tremont often folded and refolded his bedding when he was thinking about something, or when he was nervous, a habit developed from all the time he spent in the laundry. And he was getting out in less than forty-eight hours. Brendan thought Tremont was worried he would slip back into crime and wind up in Rikers again.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Tremont said. He made a careful, ruler-straight crease in the sheets and folded them over. “But I gotta tell you, I heard something.”

  Brendan was rereading The Great Divorce and tonguing the cavity where his molar had been knocked out not long before. Heaven will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. He looked up. “I don’t want to talk about what? Your weight loss? I think we’ve covered it. You look great, boss. The ladies will be lining up.”

  Tremont laughed, but there was little humor in it. “You’re kind of like a celebrity,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “When you came in here, there was a buzz about you. High-profile beef. You know?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, big shit, there have been some other celebrity-types through here,” he said. “You’re not so special.”

  “I’m dying to know.”

  Tremont set down a perfect square of a folded top sheet, laying it gently on his top bunk. “Lil’ Wayne, was here. You know? That rapper. ‘Motherfucker’ this and that. Tupac, too. Then Plaxico Burress, NFL receiver, he took a short nap here. And back in the day, Sid Vicious. Can you believe that?”

  “I’m not sure I fall in the same category.”

  “No. Maybe not. But you fall in with who’s here now.”

  Brendan was keeping it light, but he sensed the shift in Tremont’s tone. They did a bit of goofing around to pass the time. This wasn’t part of that.

  “Alright. Who?”

  “Someone who really takes the cake.”

  “Enough of the suspense, Lou. Let’s have it.”