Cap's Place: A Jack Nolan Novel (The Cap's Place Series Book 1)

by Robert Tarrant

  Justin’s solitude was broken as a roller blading blond beach bunny in a halter top and boy shorts nearly tumbled over the bench on top of him. She had evidently miscalculated the slope of the ramp and had grabbed the bench to slow her descent. Spinning to one side she had nearly gone head over heels over the back of the bench. She apologized profusely for crashing into Justin.

  Justin replied, “No harm done. Didn’t even spill my beer. You okay?”

  She pulled her hair back with both hands, a movement that appeared to nearly exceed the tensile strength of the tight halter top straining to contain her most ample breasts, and replied, “I’m fine. Just lost control for a second. Hey, where’d you get the beer?”

  Justin gestured toward the row of buildings fronting Broadwalk, “First building is a party store. They sell singles. Give the cups away with the beer.”

  “Great. I’ll be back in a minute. Save me a seat?”

  Looking up and down the empty rows Justin replied, “Will be a struggle but . . . just for you I’ll save one.”

  She called back over her shoulder, “Be right back.” Justin watched her tight little red shorts as she coasted down the ramp and headed toward the market.

  Settling back into the ambiance of the cover band, Justin saw the elderly couple walking slowly up the ramp toward him from the direction red shorts had just departed. They appeared to be in their seventies and the man was walking with a cane and favoring his right leg. They walked behind Justin, turned up the center aisle and stopped at the end of the last row where Justin was sitting. It appeared that the man just didn’t want to go any farther. “Mind if we join you?” was the pleasant inquiry of the gentleman.

  Justin chuckled, “Not at all. Plenty of room.”

  “Guess so. I just need to take a break. This damn knee is acting up again.”

  The woman smiled and said,”I told you Honey that this would be too far for you to walk. We should have taken the trolley.”

  “Damn it, I’m not crippled, just old. We’ll take the trolley back.”

  She smiled and patted him on the shoulder as he sat down heavily on the bench, “I’m going to go find us a couple of glasses of iced tea. You just take it easy and chat with this nice young man. I’ll be right back.”

  After she had departed the gentleman turned to Justin and asked, “Do you come here often?”

  Justin chuckled, “Only when the modern headliners are playing.”

  “What, you don’t like the Beatles?”

  Justin took a long drink of his beer, “Let’s cut the small talk. We don’t have long because a little beach hottie is coming back in a couple of minutes and you know how I hate to be rude.”

  The elderly gentleman looked toward the bandshell but spoke to Justin, “Well then, before your little hottie gets back why don’t you tell me what the fuck you were doing up in Lighthouse Point. Let me rephrase that. I know what you did. Why don’t you explain why you did it and who the hell authorized it?”

  “What makes you think I did anything?”

  “Don’t give me any of your bullshit. Just when everyone was starting to think that you were capable of coloring inside the lines, you go and do something stupid like that. If this blows up we’ll need to relocate you again. A hell of a lot deeper this time. That is going to displease a number of people. People we don’t need to have displeased. This was so unnecessary. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Justin took a long drink of his beer before replying, “I’m not admitting any involvement in any activity you hadn’t sanctioned.”

  The older man swiveled his head, as if he had just been violently slapped, looking directly at Justin, “Bullshit. Don’t give me any fucking lies. I . . .”

  Justin interrupted, “Be careful. I’m not working for the fucking government now. None of us are. Not directly. So don’t talk to me like I’m still part of one of your special ops teams. I took the job to find out what that waitress knew about the reporter’s investigation because I was right there and it was going to be simple. I had no idea they were going to kill her. What kind of bullshit is that? That kind of overkill is exactly why I left when I did. You think I was going to stand by and watch a second innocent girl be swept under the rug too? Somebody is out of control in DC. Don’t come chastising me. Take a look at the people you’re working for. Take a look at yourself.”

  The old man sighed deeply, “Look, I don’t like this mess any more than you do. You’re right, it is very ugly. I didn’t have anything to do with the reporter or that college girl. I would never have taken that one. You know that. Still, when you go off and get involved, involve our organization, in situations you know are the operations of others, you put us all in jeopardy. I know that this involved friends of yours but still . . .”

  “Fuck that. It’s nothing about friends. I don’t have friends, anymore than you do. This business doesn’t breed friends. I just wasn’t going to sit by and watch another innocent person get killed. Not this time!”

  The old man sighed, “Okay, okay, calm down.”

  “Calm down? You tell me to calm down? Tell those assholes in Washington, or in Langley, or wherever the fuck this is being run from, to calm down. They kill two innocent people and frame a third just to keep a lid on a messy situation and you tell me to calm down!”

  The old man rubbed his wrinkled forehead, “I’m not arguing with your values, I’m cautioning you that you’re like a pit bull barking at a pool of sharks. They’re going to do as they damn well please regardless of how loud you bark and if you jump into the water they’ll tear you to shreds.”

  Justin took a drink of his beer. “I don’t understand why that young girl had to be killed. I had imaged her computer and anyone could see that she’d only been doing background research for the reporter. She didn’t know anything of substance.”

  The old man sighed again, “That reporter’s inquiry may have stumbled onto something better left buried.”

  Justin’s eyes flashed, “We sure have degraded the value of life in this country, haven’t we.”

  “Oh, don’t act so naive. Since the founding of this country we’ve espoused one value for human life and practiced another. Don’t act like you don’t know that. Don’t act like you’ve never been an instrument of those decisions.”

  It was Justin’s turn to rub his brow, “Maybe so, but I don’t have to like seeing it so close up right here at home.”

  “Fair enough. Just don’t go reaching into Pandora’s Box without my knowledge. You could have taken several people down with you.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. At least you can’t be blamed for what you don’t know about. Isn’t that what you bureaucrats call executive deniability?”

  The old man’s eyes flashed, “Don’t you talk to me like that. I started in the trenches just like you and in a day when satellites and drones didn’t tell us exactly where to stick the spear.”

  Justin took another short swallow of beer, “Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that.”

  After taking a quick scan of the area the old man continued, “The point is, that I am blamed for not knowing about it and I am expected to rectify situations where my people go rogue on me. Even as subcontractors we are required to follow protocol. Do you understand?”

  Justin twisted his mouth up in a sneer, “What the hell was the harm? One half-ass organized crime hit man was eliminated from this earth. What’s the harm in that? Where did they find that incompetent fool anyway? Shit, he didn’t even know when he hit the right target. Really, it tied a loose end up for the people behind this mess. They’d probably have done it themselves. Couldn’t have him turning up sometime saying that it wasn’t Dockery that hired him now could they? I did them a big favor. He fucked up and went after the second girl from Cap’s, because he thought he’d made a mistake with the first girl. The bar owner, who is a former prosecutor, and the local cops got involved. Who knows what they might have uncovered? I did those Washington assholes a favor. I steered things to come out the way
they wanted. I led the bar owner down a path that pointed the murders at Dockery and he fed it to the cops.” Scoffing, “And no else even had to be killed.”

  Rubbing his temple again the old man sighed, “The tip you gave us about the missing flash drive probably bought you some slack with the powers-to-be. Creating a flash drive from the image of that girl’s computer and planting it in Dockery’s apartment was the final nail.

  “Sorry if I don’t find the honor in helping to frame an innocent person for murder, double murder.”

  “Quit taking that holier-than-thou attitude with me. You’ve done a hell of a lot worse than that many times over and we both know it.”

  Justin scoffed, “Oh, that makes me feel much better. I guess everybody wins . . . well except for the two innocent people who died. That’s without counting Dockery’s suicide. Suicide . . . what a crock of shit that is.”

  The old man shifted on the bench, “I’m not here to argue with you, I’m here to deliver a message. Stay inside the lines. No one outside of your team knows about the guy you took out, right?”

  Justin’s mouth twitched in a micro-flinch, “Of course not. Who would know?”

  “Just making certain that you hadn’t created any loose ends yourself.”

  “No loose ends. People only know what we want them to know.”

  “Good. I’ll be in touch. Stay out of trouble. Why don’t you go out and truly do some fishing for a change?” It sounded more like a directive than a question. With that, the old man slowly rose from the bench and ambled away, his cane lending support. Justin watched him join the woman who had returned on Broadwalk holding two plastic cups of what he guessed was the iced tea she was seeking. By all appearances, they were just another elderly couple out for an evening stroll. Things are seldom as they appear.

  Justin finished his beer, but the hottie had not returned. To no one in particular he sighed, “Probably got a better offer.” He got up, dropped his empty cup in the trash barrel, and ambled down the walk gazing out at the ocean horizon.

  The first man reached up and switched off the electronic equipment lining the side wall in the rear compartment of the white van parked in the nearby lot. The second man turned and said, “I’ll go out and retrieve the bug from the back of the bench out there. I wish the audio quality had been better. Too much background noise to make out much. Maybe the geeks can get more when they listen to the tapes. You call Special Agent Karnes and tell her we won’t need anything additional from her tonight. Also, make certain the surveillance crew knows he’s headed up the beach. Tell them to stay tight, I want everything we can get on this guy.”

  Acknowledgements

  I must extend my untold gratitude to the following people for their encouragement, council, editorial comment, friendship, and love. Jessica Benbow, Bob Cook, Lynda English, Alexis Gulliver, Chuck Mannisto, Virginia Mannisto, Renee Morales, Art Nash, Hilary Poisson, Denise Rhadigan, John Rhadigan, John Tarrant, Pat Tarrant, Jim Tyler, Judy Tyler, and Chris Wheeler. In a class of her own, my wife Karen has supported me every step of the journey in ways that I am incapable of adequately expressing. Without all of these people this project would never have reached fruition. Of course, try as they may, they were unable to prevent me from making mistakes. The mistakes are mine, and mine alone.