Off the Chart

by James W. Hall

  “And you say you met with Mr. Webster and Mr. Rasmussen last night?”

  “I was shanghaied into a meeting,” Thorn said. “And Zashie is the name the big guy used.”

  “What was the nature of that meeting?”

  “I was recruited to help with their investigation.”

  “Recruited?” Taft said, and chuckled. “You, working with these guys? Come on, Thorn. Give us something credible here.”

  Agent Fox stared across at Taft for a long moment, a little jerk on the chain of command. The sheriff scowled but shut his mouth and took a seat on one of the stools a few feet farther from the action.

  “And what were you being recruited to do?”

  “If you’re this big task force czar, how come you don’t already know?”

  “What were you recruited to do, Mr. Thorn?”

  Fox tugged on an earlobe, looking off at the far wall.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Taft shook his head and glared at Thorn.

  Unperturbed, Agent Fox did a slow tour of Thorn’s living room, giving the place a cold analysis. Though Fox was probably in his late forties, his face was nearly unlined, as though he’d held his expressions in check since childhood, no grins or grimaces allowed, an eternal poker face.

  Anne Bonny’s eyes kept drifting to the far window, as if at any moment her pirate hero would appear and whisk her away from all this turmoil.

  “Who’s the other guy in the tree?” Thorn said. “He the one telling lies to Sugarman last night? Or was that you?”

  “How do you make your living, Mr. Thorn?” Fox was examining the bookshelves, Thorn’s paltry library, mainly hardback novels he’d picked up for pennies at the flea market. Adventure yarns, his share of sea stories, a couple of literary novels he’d been trying to wade through for years.

  “I tie fishing flies,” he said. “Bonefish lures. You know that fish?”

  “And you can earn a living doing that?”

  “It keeps gas in the Rolls.”

  “Thorn, don’t be a prick,” Taft said. “This isn’t a game show.”

  “Hey, if the suggestion here is that I’ve been supplementing my income with a little maritime piracy, I’d like to dispel that idea right now. I tie lures. It doesn’t bring in much, but I don’t need much.”

  “Nobody’s said anything about maritime piracy, Mr. Thorn.”

  With his back to the others, Agent Fox took a book from the shelf, riffled its pages, then put it back. He walked over to Thorn’s chair and reached into his shirt pocket and handed Thorn the mug shot of Marshall Marshall. Thorn took it and looked it over. The mongrel hadn’t gotten any prettier.

  “The sheriff says you failed to identify this man earlier. Is that correct?”

  Thorn said nothing.

  “You see, Mr. Thorn, your defiant attitude isn’t helping your situation. We know Mr. Marshall sometimes works as front gate security at Vic Joy’s estate. We know you had an encounter with the man this morning because it was observed by our surveillance team. So you see, Thorn, we know you’ve already provided false testimony to us once. What I don’t understand is why you would lie if you have nothing to hide.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Taft said. “That’s why. It’s his frigging nature.”

  “Sheriff,” Agent Fox said.

  “Okay, yeah,” Thorn said. “So I had a brief encounter with Marshall. Fine, you nailed me, congratulations on the sharp police work.”

  “What other facts have you misrepresented to us?”

  “Ask me some more questions, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Why would a federal investigator recruit such a man as you, Thorn? Can you help us with that? What do you bring to the table?”

  “You’d have to ask Webster.”

  “Jesus Christ, Thorn. Give it up, man.” Taft stood up and stalked to the door. “He’s not going to tell you shit. You’re wasting your time, Fox.”

  Taft let the screen door slam behind him.

  Special Agent Fox took off his glasses and reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief. While he rubbed at the lenses, he turned his pale eyes on Thorn.

  “I understand you don’t trust me, Thorn. You don’t believe I have your best interests at heart, so you’re going to be as perverse as possible.”

  “That about covers it,” Thorn said.

  Fox put his glasses back on and tucked the handkerchief away. He came close to Thorn’s chair and squatted down in an Indian crouch, bringing his face to within inches of Thorn’s.

  “I assume this mistrust springs from negative experiences with law enforcement in the past.”

  “Nicely put,” Thorn said.

  Agent Fox reached out and laid a hand on the back of Thorn’s bare arm. It was a weird gesture—neither friendly nor overtly intimidating. But not an innocent touch, either. His hand lay heavy against Thorn’s flesh, warm and somehow exploratory, as if he were a human polygraph and could read Thorn’s errant pulse.

  “Would you mind, Miss Joy?”

  “What?”

  She’d been staring out at the dock, paying no attention.

  “Could you give us a moment of privacy?”

  Fox smiled over his shoulder at her, and Anne looked at Thorn.

  “It’s okay,” Thorn said. “If he tries anything funny, I’ll shriek.”

  Anne went outside and the other men gave her room at the rail. Everyone watching silently as the last of the bodies was cut down from the limb.

  “I’m going to take you at your word, Mr. Thorn.” The agent’s hand still lay on his forearm.

  Thorn could have moved his arm aside, but this felt like some kind of alpha dog contest, a tactile staring match, and though it struck Thorn as a silly game, he couldn’t seem to back down, either.

  “I’m going to assume that James Lee Webster did, in fact, enlist you into some aspect of his operation. You mentioned maritime piracy, so I presume that Webster also informed you to some degree of the nature of his enterprise.”

  “He put on a slide show,” Thorn said. “The Wide, Wide World of Pirates.”

  “And for some reason you agreed to cooperate with him.”

  “He was more persuasive than you are. He shared a little.”

  Fox nodded.

  “A few minutes ago you asked me a question. You wondered who the other man was hanging beside Webster and Rasmussen.”

  With Fox cozied up so close beside him, touching his flesh in that intimate way, Thorn had the feeling that this was something of a religious ceremony for the agent. A baptism into some secret order.

  “To lose Secretary Webster is distressing enough,” Fox said, “but losing that other gentleman, Mr. Thorn, I don’t mind telling you, it’s a colossal setback. For us personally and for the welfare of our country.”

  “Let me guess,” Thorn said. “This was the guy who’d penetrated one of the pirate gangs.”

  Agent Fox blinked, then notched up an eyebrow.

  “Obviously Secretary Webster had a high level of confidence in you.”

  “I think he was just desperate.”

  “It’s a breach of FBI policy to involve civilians in bureau investigations.”

  “I’m not crazy about the idea myself,” Thorn said.

  “But in this case,” Fox said, peering into Thorn’s eyes, “we’re at a critical juncture and we need all the assets we can find.”

  “I already know more about this bullshit than I want to,” Thorn said. “Why don’t you keep it to yourself, Fox?”

  The agent appraised him for a long moment, then shook his head.

  “And you’re certainly not my idea of a helpful assistant, either. But at the moment you’re all I have.”

  Fox glanced toward the window, then turned back to Thorn.

  “Things have ratcheted up in the last week, a real spike of activity. And now we’re blind. We’ve lost our eyes and ears. Sammy Ching was the third man in the tree. As you suggest, Ching had penetrated a very act
ive, very well-disciplined gang of maritime thieves based in Singapore. While he had not yet gained access to the highest levels of the organization, he was moving that way quickly. Now this, finding him so far from his base of operations, executed and hung up for display. These are the kind of people we’re dealing with, Mr. Thorn. This is why extraordinary measures are called for.”

  Agent Fox gave Thorn’s arm a solid thump and rose from his squat.

  Baptism complete. Now he was one of them, deputized, Citizen Thorn. And it was his turn to come clean. A cute technique, all so earnest and heartfelt, how could Thorn not reciprocate?

  In fact, Daniel Salbone’s name was itching on Thorn’s tongue. It would damn well be comforting to have a contingent of federal agents hiding in the bushes when the jealous Mr. Salbone appeared to reclaim his lover.

  But Thorn couldn’t shake the feeling that getting any more entangled with these people would mean more delay in Janey’s release.

  “So I’m sure you can appreciate, Mr. Thorn, how devastating it is for us to lose Sammy Ching. And how totally incomprehensible.”

  “I can see that, yes.”

  “Do you have any idea why his killer might have chosen this location to hang these men?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “All right,” Agent Fox said, letting go of a breath, ready to close the deal. “Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”

  “There’s a little girl missing.”

  “We’re aware of that, but at the moment that’s beyond our bailiwick.”

  “Beyond your what?”

  “My mission is very focused and precise, Mr. Thorn. We are attempting to disrupt the final coalescing of several large criminal enterprises.”

  “The confederacy of pirates,” Thorn said.

  He felt Agent Fox staring at him, but Thorn’s gaze was fixed on that final body being handed down to the men on the ground. Jimmy Lee Webster, his days of strutting finished.

  Thorn looked down at his bloody shorts. Feeling the lingering burn of Vic’s blade in his crotch and the twin aches of the stab wounds in his gut.

  He looked up and met the agent’s stare.

  “Look, Fox. Webster claimed his people, which I assume would also be your people, had Janey Sugarman under their safe control. Was he lying?”

  Fox meandered through the room, taking a moment to compose his answer.

  “We’re aware of the disappearance of Dr. Markham’s yacht, as well as the loss of life of his passengers. However, we can’t know for certain that a kidnapping has actually occurred. At the moment the operating theory is that the child you’re referring to was lost at sea and her body has not yet been recovered.”

  “There was a goddamn ransom note. You have the mug shot of the guy who knifed it to my door.”

  “Marshall is no more than an opportunist, Mr. Thorn. Trying to extort money from a grief-stricken family. Such scam artists surface frequently in high-profile cases. Preying on the vulnerable.”

  “So that’s the cover story, is it? That’s keeping the press away.”

  Fox cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. Going to dig in, make a last push with this idiot civilian.

  “Because of certain partitioning that exists between investigative agencies, one faction of agents is not always fully apprised of the missions and strategies of other factions, even within a single task force. And to complicate matters further, Secretary Webster was fond of operating in a somewhat autonomous manner. The end result is that our team was not always up to speed on the direction Webster’s inquiries were taking. Now that he’s gone, it’s crucial for us to know everything we can about the progress of his investigation. So I’m asking you one more time, Mr. Thorn, to enlighten me about what exactly Secretary Webster recruited you to do.”

  Thorn took one more look at the grim work unfolding in his yard, then he stood up and walked across the room and stood close to Fox.

  “Was Webster lying to me? Do you have any fucking idea where the girl is? Is she under your control?”

  Fox considered the question for a moment, his gaze drifting toward the far wall.

  “I’m sure Secretary Webster had very good reasons for presenting the situation in the manner he did.”

  “Meaning he had a good reason to lie.”

  “Secretary Webster’s methods were not always ones we sanctioned.”

  “You fucking people.”

  “It’s important that you keep in mind, Thorn, that there’s a great deal more at stake here than the welfare of one little girl. Although we take her disappearance seriously, as I noted, we’re also under serious time pressure on other fronts. In his final transmission a few days ago Ching was clear that a large gathering was about to take place. A sit-down of the top men of several of these organizations. We don’t know where or when, but there are indications that this meeting is imminent.”

  “A pirate bash.”

  “The implications are enormous, Mr. Thorn, the scale of this merger of criminal elements is beyond anything we’ve—”

  Thorn cut him off, waving his hands a few inches in front of the agent’s face as if to wake him from his bullshit trance.

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard that speech already. The future of Western civilization hangs in the balance.”

  “You can sneer, but it’s true. The stakes are huge.”

  “Maybe your Western civilization is hanging in the balance,” Thorn said. “But not mine. It just so happens that my bailiwick includes only one thing at the moment, and that’s getting Janey Sugarman home safe. So unless you’re going to arrest me or lock me up in a gibbet cage, you can just get the hell out of here. I’m not cooperating with you people. Go on, do your job and stop those gangs of pirates from coalescing. That’s not my concern.”

  Fox was silent, looking through his black-framed glasses into Thorn’s eyes with something close to disinterest. Already plotting his next move and the one after that.

  “All right, Thorn. If you’re unwilling to assist, fine, that’s your right as a citizen. But let’s be very clear about this. Whatever your relationship was with James Lee Webster, it’s finished. You’re no longer involved in any aspect of this case. And I’m giving you fair warning, Thorn. Stay clear. Don’t stick your face into this again, and if you don’t listen to me and you get in trouble, don’t come to us begging for help. It won’t be there. You’re on your own.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The way I like it.”

  Twenty-Four

  Sheffield arrived at Sugarman’s at quarter till six. Alone. Telling Sugar his high-tech assistant had the day off and was visiting in-laws in north Florida.

  Frank was wearing khakis and a white shirt with epaulets, new boat shoes. A lot dressier than his normal look. Airplane clothes, off on a fishing safari. Sandy hair still cut scruffy. Looking as lean and suntanned as he had when he’d worked alongside Sugarman on a murder-for-hire case ten years back. Sugar acting as liaison between the county cops and the feds. They’d hit it off. Frank was a slightly straighter version of Thorn. Neater, more orderly, held a job. But with a heavy dose of devil-may-care. Quicker with a “fuck it” than any cop Sugar’d ever met.

  “She’s gotten sick to her stomach,” Sugarman said. “She called a while ago and said she was going to call back in a bit.”

  “I can wait,” Frank said. “A while anyway.”

  Sugarman sat down in the chair and stared at the blank computer screen.

  “Computer visitation,” Frank said. “You’re not allowed to see her in person?”

  “Twice a month I see her and her sister. The computer thing’s a bonus.”

  “No postmarital fighting going on?”

  “It’s not that, Frank. Jeannie and I are fine.”

  “Had to ask.”

  Frank was pacing the room, touching things lightly, moving on.

  “What’s eating you, Sheffield?”

  “I called around on this. Sounded so weird.”

  “And?”r />
  “I gather this is part of something larger,” Frank said. “I can’t tell exactly what. But the word I got was that this whole deal was already in the pipeline.”

  “What? Finding Janey? Somebody’s working on it?”

  Frank stopped circling the room and sat down on the edge of the daybed. Hunched over, elbows on his thighs, with a sour look like a ballplayer sent to the bench for screwing up an easy play.

  “Couldn’t get a straight answer, Sugar. Spent the hour drive down here on my cell talking to one guy after another. Inference I’m drawing is that there’s some territorial thing going on, some squabble about who’s running the show, top dog shit. You know how it is. Who gets to piss on which tree. It happens with these interagency task force things. A lot of big people running around looking for the biggest tree.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “You saw her? You talked to her? On the computer, satellite hookup?”

  “Yeah, Frank. I wasn’t hallucinating.”

  “These heavyweights,” Sheffield said. “That could be a good thing, it could be bad. But how it looks, Sugar, they got people swarming all over this thing.”

  “So what’re you telling me? Whatever can be done is being done?”

  Frank looked at Sugar, then shifted his eyes to the tree branches out the window. Took a long time with that like he was framing his reply.

  “If Hannah wouldn’t kill me for missing this goddamn trip she’s planned for six months, I’d stay and see what I could stir up. Even though I’ve been assured your case is already in good hands.”

  “And is it? What’s your gut tell you?”

  He brought his gaze back to Sugar.

  “I’d like to say yes. I been with this outfit going on twenty-eight years, but I don’t know, Sugar. I can’t honestly say what the fuck’s going on, what kind of hands you’re in. I just know there’s a lot of people in town who don’t usually get this far south. Some seriously hot and bothered types.”

  Sugarman nodded.

  Frank said, “Janey can call you, but you can’t call her?”

  “I’m logged on to the video chat room. All I can do is wait for her to show up, but she has to come in from her side.”