by Robert Lane
Last night burst free in her memory.
Detective Eric Rutledge had busted down the door, descended the steps, and proclaimed he was there to rescue her. Her spirit had ignited in relief, but before she had the chance to thank him, he clipped her temple with the stock of his Browning shotgun. Jenny had stumbled to her knees.
She had gotten up.
“What the hell?” Rutledge said, and struck her again. She went down for the count.
Now she had to get up again. She didn’t know if she could. If she even wanted to. Why bother? Why him? He’s a cop, she thought. Jenny tried to find reason for what had happened last night, but neither the energy nor the curiosity was there. She rolled over on her back and blew her breath out at the rafters. She wanted to go home. In her head now, Please, God. I’ll do anything.
Oh, that’s just super swell, she thought. Stupid-promises-to-God time. Not yet. This floorboard might be floating—
“But this boat’s not going down.” Her voice startled her.
She stood and took a moment to make sure that position would hold. Oh, yeah, she remembered as she glanced at the floor, I don’t have any shoes. “Never thought that would be an issue,” she said. Her voice sounded strange. Wonder how long I was out? She surveyed her surroundings. “Wonderful, a barn.” She took stock: one wheelbarrow with a flat tire, an assortment of garden tools, empty plastic trash cans, paint cans on a shelf with dried paint coating their sides, and a red Toro lawn mower. No food. No place to sleep.
No plans to keep me alive.
Her head throbbed with every downbeat of her heart. She felt like one of the paint cans; part of her was outside her and no good anymore. She considered the cans. Could she swing one? Whack the next person through the door with it? The spiked water bottle certainly hadn’t made the cut. She lifted a paint can and saw it half hidden by other cans.
A hatchet.
At the sight of it, all of Jenny’s frustrations, all of her dreams, all of her battered hope, all of Jenny turned to anger. Her world seemed so much simpler now that everything was boiled down to one emotion. She picked up the hatchet by its rubber handle. “What do we have here?” she said, her voice low and outside of her. She took a swipe at the air. “The big gun, baby, and the next bozo through that door gets the welcome package.”
Just like my daddy laid that man down at Club 57.
CHAPTER 39
It was evening, and I sat at the end of my dock with my buddy Mark. First name “Maker’s.” We go back a bit.
I wasn’t going to run out this time and had brought the bottle along with a bottle of water. I have a theory that if you drink water while drinking booze, you’ll be able to drink twice as much alcohol. If you know or believe otherwise, kindly keep it to yourself. I fished my phone out of my pocket and brought up the picture of Jenny. I took a quick glance and put it away. I’d had her at the Lizard. I’d given her up at the Lizard.
Her blood was on me now.
I poured some amber gold into my tumbler. I had just finished a few shots and was looking forward to a solitude binge. Hadley III, fascinated with the baitfish that skimmed the surface, hung her head over the side. I gave her a shove, and she went in with a frantic scream, paws outstretched. Easy now—it was just a fleeting thought. Even though I’d told them Binelli couldn’t find an alternative address for Rutledge, Morgan and Garrett were inside, still trying to get a hit on his whereabouts, advancing the cause of finding Jenny, and generally doing constructive things with their lives. Good for them.
McGlashan finally had returned my call and confirmed that Rutledge was AWOL. His car was gone and wasn’t at the airport. His house was clean. He said he’d immediately pass on any new information. He had checked the records of Rutledge’s cruiser and said Rutledge had spent a little more than a minute at Billy Ray’s car after he had interviewed Jenny. We agreed it was nothing he couldn’t have handled if it ever came back to him. If it were me, I’d blow off any questions or accusations by stating I’d heard a rattle under the car and gotten out to check it: “Billy Ray’s car was right next to me? No kidding. Nope, never saw it.” There isn’t much in this world that you can’t bullshit your way into or out of. Take it from me; I know.
Kathleen sat down next to me. I don’t know where she came from. She was just there. Plop. Like magic. Her bare feet dangled over the edge of the composite decking. We sat in silence, and no boats went by. The premonitory red channel marker was doing that blinking thing.
“I just want you to know,” she said, “if the only thing you wanted out of our relationship was my car, it would be worth it. I’d do it again.”
I didn’t respond. Can’t a guy drink alone?
“But you’ve got to bring it back clean. No excuses for the way it looks.”
Nothing.
“I made chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.”
I took a sip of bourbon.
“Oh, and I saw Elvis,” she said. “He had a ‘War on Drugs’ T-shirt on and was having drinks with Nixon and Frost on the front porch of the Vinoy.”
I glanced at her. Her hair was pulled back, and the moon illuminated her face. Hadley III had already found her lap. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to pick her up—the woman, not the fur ball—and walk out of life. Instead, I asked, “How did you get here?”
“Nice to see you too. I called Morgan.” She picked up the bottle of bourbon. “You dropped me for this floozy?”
“She understands me.” I went to take it from her, but she pulled it away. Hadley III jumped off her lap.
“In case you forgot, sailor, you’re on deck.”
“You do know I drowned my last three girlfriends.”
“Finally—I could never understand that swim test.”
“How’d your thingamabob go today?”
“Hmm…” She put the cap back on the bottle. So sad. “It was a fine thingamabob. Kind of you to inquire.”
“I don’t have a clue what—”
Her finger lightly graced my lips. “Where’s Jenny? She’s not in that bottle. That would be Jeannie, and she’s not real.”
“Gone.”
“Gone?”
“As in ‘with the wind.’”
“That’s Tuesday, I believe.”
I remembered that Susan had called twice, and I had let both go to voice mail.
“Do you know who has her?” Kathleen asked.
“I think so, but we don’t know where. She’s been passed around, and I can’t see how her current captor has any use for her. Her luck, as it was, has run out.”
“And you’re sitting here sparring with me and supporting the hard liquor industry?”
I shrugged then gave her an abbreviated version of the past twenty-four hours. I left out my conversation with Dangelo regarding his suspicion of her true identity and my nebulous understanding with him to trade the money for his silence.
“We hit the wall,” I concluded. “We can’t find him.”
“What about Susan?” she asked.
“What about her?”
“Have you kept her informed?”
“No. I’ve been avoiding calling her because I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news.”
“My, such courage. Can’t your friend Jack here help prep you?”
“It’s Mark.”
She stole a glance at the liquor bottle. “So it is. The devil has a twin. Susan deserves—”
“I know.”
“—to know.”
A baitfish jumped. It leapt out of its element, propelled by fear and the evolutionary instinct to survive. It didn’t think; it acted.
“Call her,” Kathleen said, and placed her hand on my shoulder. She stood up with my liquid savior in her hand and strolled down the dock, allowing me to call Susan in privacy. I could use a few ounces of her common sense. Couple more ounces from that bottle wouldn’t be bad either.
I called Susan and informed her that I thought Rutledge had Jenny. I told her that I believe
d he had stolen the money and that the Colemans’ abduction of her was unrelated to Rutledge, but it had forced Rutledge to cover his tracks. She was reserved during the conversation and showed little emotion, let alone disbelief or anger that Rutledge was to blame. I realized that time had been chipping away at her, eroding her hope and attacking her dreams like a virus.
“He needs to silence her,” she said. It came out as neither a question nor a statement.
“I didn’t say—”
“You said you can’t find him.”
“That’s correct. We’re—”
“Did you check his sister’s house?”
“His sister?”
“Remember? I told you he flirted with me and said he used to take care of his sister, but she’d died recently.”
“Who never married,” I said as I recalled Susan telling me that Rutledge had hit on her. I stood and started jogging the hundred feet down the dock to my house. Morgan and Kathleen were on the screen porch. I didn’t see Garrett.
“Tell me more,” I said to the phone pressed hard against my ear.
“That’s about it. Can you find his sister’s house? Do you think he’d take her there?”
I stopped at my back screen door. “I don’t know, but we’ll look.”
I hung up. I didn’t trust myself to say anything else to Susan. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up. So far, I hadn’t done a damn thing for her except let her down. I recalled Binelli telling me Rutledge “grew up just south of you.” It took Morgan less than five minutes to find the address of a Margaret Rutledge, who had passed away five months ago. The property was still in her name. It was in Manatee County, twenty minutes south of here. He asked if I wanted him to check for other female Rutledges who had died south of us in the previous six months; I replied that we’d go with the odds. I told Kathleen not to wait up, and she rolled her eyes and shook her head. She claimed a lounge chair on the porch, tugged her legs underneath her, put the side table light on low, and picked up a book.
I changed into boots, jeans, and a tight jacket with inside pockets. Garrett was in the garage, hooking up a new Ringside punching bag. I wasn’t aware he’d gotten one. I gave him the new intelligence. He unlocked the steel cabinet and got out his SASS and the red spinnaker bag. It held a medical kit, currency, passports, sat phones, and a dessert tray of guns and knifes. Garrett, Morgan, and I piled into my truck.
“My bet is that at least the money is there,” Garrett said. He was in the backseat with the spinnaker bag. “Been there all along. Rutledge wouldn’t keep it at his house. Too much risk.”
“She’s there,” Morgan said.
“We don’t know,” I started in, “but we might as—”
“He’s confused,” Morgan said, “doing something he’s never done. He’ll take her to a place he’s familiar with. Not for long—he’ll know that’s dangerous—but long enough to regroup his thoughts, and then he’ll act quickly.” I didn’t answer. He held strong convictions based on a different sphere, one I didn’t fully acknowledge. I gave Morgan a glance. But it wasn’t his face or ponytail—or flowered shirt or moon talisman around his neck—that caught my attention. He wore tightly laced tennis shoes.
CHAPTER 40
“Success,” Winston Churchill noted, “consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Maybe we were just chasing down another failure, but that wouldn’t dent our enthusiasm.
I swung onto 275 south, and the interstate widened where a Maginot Line of tollbooths guarded the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. I clocked sixty-two on the truck’s digital display through the tollbooth’s SunPass lane—that was a personal best. Felt pretty good about that. We rode the bridge high into the night like a rocket trying to break earth’s gravitational pull. If some unfortunate man with a six-shooter, a badge, and a pension happened to be in my path, he’d have to catch me. I’d been a step behind at every turn, and if that were to be the case again, it wouldn’t be due to lack of focus. Fifteen minutes later, I took the Route 19 exit, followed by two lefts and a fork to the right that my copilot ordered. I pulled the truck off the side of the road about a hundred yards shy of our target. We were in flat-bush Florida country—the stuff that never makes a postcard despite occupying a substantial portion of the state.
Binelli called.
“What?”
“More news on Rutledge,” she said. Garrett passed me my Boker knife, and I wiggled my body higher in the seat, twisted, and put it the pocket of my jeans.
“What?” I hit her again.
“Catch you at a bad moment?” Her tone held no guise of sincerity.
“I’m camped outside Rutledge’s sister’s house. I don’t have—”
“You’re where?”
“Rutledge’s sister. I—”
“Listen to me. We found out that when Rutledge goes to Vegas—”
“We’ve been over this,” I interrupted her. I wanted to get on the ground and approach the house. “He owes money to Dangelo’s group. Remember, Dangelo told me. I told you—”
“Listen, you arrogant pinhead. You don’t know what you’re walking into. Rutledge worked for Dangelo. You listening now?”
“Go.” I put the phone on speaker.
“Remember I told you that last year Rutledge was cleared of a shooting death in a drug raid that he went into solo? Turns out the man he plugged was trying to move into Joseph Dangelo’s turf.”
“I thought you stuck with CliffsNotes.”
“Yeah, well, I got curious about how tiny your world had suddenly gotten, and it’s a good thing for you, because I was able to requisition bank records. I found the missing money from that drug raid.”
She paused as if she expected me to interrupt. “And?” I asked.
“The money was wired into his sister’s account,” Binelli said, picking up the speed, as if she’d just been given the green flag, “two weeks after the raid.”
“Coincidence.” Soon as I said it, I knew I’d wasted four syllables.
“Doubtful. Rutledge spent his Vegas time almost exclusively at casinos Dangelo’s group has interest in. He lobbied hard to be on the drug case. Wasn’t his to start with. Besides, it was twenty-five grand even. You know if we pulled tax records, we wouldn’t see it declared.”
I thought back to my conversation with Dangelo. A smooth talker, he had stumbled with his words when describing when Chuck Duke had made the connection: “He recognized…He uncovered the name of someone who owed us some money.” Like Hemingway’s nuanced improvement over Twain’s quote, recognizing a name shows more familiarity than uncovering a name. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back, I doubt someone in Chuck Duke’s capacity, even considering his mental prowess, would keep tabs on every Vegas debt holder. Dangelo had told me Rutledge owed them money, but he’d withheld the information that Rutledge had performed a hit for him. I understood why, but Dangelo still had engaged in less than full disclosure that day in the restaurant. I was ticked with myself for assuming he had shown me all his cards. When he had said Rutledge owed him money, I should have known there was more. On the other end, I had Rutledge pretending he couldn’t pronounce Dangelo’s name. Dee-angelo. Both had outplayed me.
But no one tosses my cork into the water.
“Okay,” I snapped back. “Dangelo’s association gets to know Rutledge by his gambling debt to them. Maybe they keep closer tabs on him; it’s good to have a man with a badge be indebted to you. They see opportunity when they need someone eliminated, someone who’s moving in on them, and they give the job to Rutledge. Pass him some cash, maybe even forgive a debt in the process.”
“No way of knowing if he was in debt to them at the time,” Binelli said, “but it’s a safe bet and meaningless for our discussion. What I don’t understand is why Dangelo didn’t see this earlier.”
“Dangelo told me they’d just connected the dots themselves that Rutledge was the guy who had interviewed Jenny. What was given to us wasn’t so easy for
them to figure out.” Garrett got out of the truck but kept his door open so he could listen. I was trying to wrap my mind around the implication of Binelli’s information. “My guess,” I continued, “is that Dangelo needs to find Rutledge before I find Rutledge. Rutledge could roll and sing to negotiate a lighter sentence if he gets caught. Dangelo would like him dead. Probably like Rutledge dead more than recovering the money.”
“You’re dialed in now. You’ve got two sets of enemies.”
“Maybe not.”
“How so?” she asked.
“We’ve been passing the ceremonial pipe around here. Dangelo’s interests are aligned with mine.” I was beginning to see my enemies, and outside of Rutledge, I didn’t think Dangelo’s boys—assuming Eric Rutledge never saw another sunrise—were in that club. Jenny, unfortunately, held no interest to either of the conflicting parties.
Binelli’s voice brought me back. “Your curtain’s up.”
“I owe you.”
“Always.”
I stepped out of the truck. “This place is either empty, or we’ve got a crowd,” Garrett said. “If we found this house, Dangelo can too. We want Jenny alive; he wants Rutledge dead.”
Garrett and I were on the same page. I replied, “That’s the winning combination tonight.” We discussed our plan and headed into the darkness. I didn’t bother to tell Morgan to stay with the truck. He never had listened to me in the past, and something in his past made him—and based on what I’d witnessed when he’d helped us rescue Kathleen on the beach—uncannily comfortable with guns in the night.
CHAPTER 41
A two-story house. Lights on. A car parked out front. Margaret Rutledge, dead as she was, was throwing a party. I should have asked McGlashan what kind of wheels Rutledge drove. A small barn with another car parked tightly across its doors was off to my right. To keep someone inside? I claimed the barn, and Garrett took the house. Morgan was the floater, going where the noise and action drew him. Our phones were on vibrate and group text.
I sprinted through the high grass. I was still a hundred feet out from the barn when gunfire erupted from the house. I hit the ground, and my injured left ankle twisted awkwardly in a hole. Garrett’s SIG Sauer retorted. I rose into a low crouch position.