Liquid Smoke (Noah Braddock)

by Jeff Shelby

  “Why?” I repeated.

  And then a tiny crack appeared in his expression, his hardened features softening for just a moment.

  “Because if I hadn’t,” he said, “you and Carolina were going to die.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Simington rubbed a finger over the tattoo of my name on his wrist. “Your mother was smart to tell me to get lost when she did. I wasn’t a complete disaster when you were born, but I was heading in that direction.”

  I took a deep breath. I knew I was about to hear some things I’d wondered about my whole life. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, an empty smile on his face. “I was never into anything good. It was just varying degrees of bad. Didn’t know any different. And I was good at what I did.”

  “Which was?”

  “I enforced.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I always liked that word. Almost made it sound legit. I was hired muscle. Threatened, intimidated, beat the shit out of people.” He paused. “Sometimes more.”

  The glass between us was cloudy, smudged. I wanted to wipe it clean so I could see his face clearly.

  “Keene and I ran in the same circles,” he said. “When all you do is the wrong thing, you get hooked into the bad guy underground network. We were both in it. We had done some jobs together, some small-time stuff.” The expression on his face darkened, and he folded his thick arms across his chest. “Then he got something on me.”

  “Your gambling?” I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow, surprised, then slowly nodded. “Nice work. Yeah. The gambling. I was shit deep in debt, and it was growing by the hour. I couldn’t stop it.”

  “You could’ve stopped gambling.”

  “Please. You’ve proved already that you aren’t stupid. All the clichés about gamblers? They all applied to me. I always thought my next big play was the one that would right the ship. And it wasn’t like I was going to get a job to pay off the debt.” The empty smile reappeared. “A real job, anyway.”

  “What did you do before the casinos and Keene?” I asked for my own curiosity.

  He shrugged. “Nothing you’d wanna hear about. Like I said. Hired muscle. Some of it was legit, some of it wasn’t. Same shit, different places. Not like I was punching a clock. Money was always good and when you aren’t afraid of much, you can always find work. I collected for dealers. Did some protection work for them. Pickup and delivery. I tried construction, but it didn’t take.” He shifted his weight. “I was better at destruction.”

  That sounded about right.

  “Not like I ever put a resume together, Noah,” he said. “The work I did, you don’t need one. You meet people in bars and your name gets around and you hang around in the wrong crowds. That’s your resume. I started right out of high school, delivering boosted cars, and it just grew. Always had cash in my pocket, never had a schedule, and I was good at it. Hard to believe you could get by doing that shit for thirty years, but I managed alright. And if I hadn’t started gambling, I’d still be doing it.”

  “How’d that start?”

  He laughed, shook his head. “Simple hundred dollar bet on a Lakers game one night. I won. Wasn’t a big deal that night, but, man. It flipped a switch.”

  I took a deep breath, settled my thoughts.

  “Okay. How did Keene play in?” I asked.

  “He was employed by the casino,” Simington said. “By Moffitt. They extended me some credit lines—probably because they knew I’d never be able to get even, I was so far in. So they let me fall a little further. When it got pretty obvious that I wasn’t getting out of the hole anytime soon, they cut me off and told me I owed them.”

  Simington leaned back in the chair and glanced over his shoulder as another guard did a walk-by. “I did some simple stuff first. Collecting and what not. Enough that I thought we were square.”

  “Wait. Was Keene running a smuggling operation?”

  Simington shook his head. “Yeah. Moffitt lets him scout his casinos for guys who are desperate for cash, maybe in over their heads, deep enough that they’re willing to do something illegal.”

  “Drive people over the border.”

  He nodded. “In return, Moffitt gets a percentage of Keene’s operation.”

  “Why would Moffitt want in? That’s a huge risk for nickels and dimes.”

  Simington shrugged. “I don’t know. Moffitt and Keene were tight. Keene ran a lot, though. Wasn’t just nickels and dimes. He was making some serious money.”

  I filed that away for later thought. “Okay. You thought you were square.”

  “Right. I thought I was done. My debt was square and I’d curbed the gambling. I was picking up odd jobs, looking for something steady. But then Keene told me I had one last job.”

  “Vasquez and Tenayo?” I said.

  “Names all sound the same to me.”

  I looked away, thinking it was a bad idea to try to punch my hand through the window to choke him.

  “Hey.” He leaned toward the window again. “Wasn’t my business to know their names.”

  “What a professional,” I said, turning back to him.

  “I was a professional,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Because I told him I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was a bullshit job and I knew it,” he said. “I knew the two Mexicans had probably paid Keene and he was just being the vicious asshole he loves being. I had no problem collecting from guys who owed. But I didn’t make it my business to take out guys who had paid their debts. I don’t know if Keene did it on a regular basis—knowing him he probably did—but I didn’t want any part of that.” He laid his palms flat on the counter beneath the glass. “So I said no.”

  “But you did kill them,” I said. “You admitted that. So what happened?”

  Simington took a deep breath and leaned away from the window, uncertainty slipping onto his face for the first time in my two visits. His fingers went to the tattoo again for a moment, like my name might give him something. It made me want to rip the letters off his skin.

  “I told Keene no,” he said. “He could take those guys out himself if he wanted it done. Figured the worst he would do was come after me. I had no problem with that. I wasn’t afraid of him because I was square and thought I was out from under him.” He hesitated. “But he went a different route.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at it, the skin tightening across his forehead. “Showed up two days after I told him no. Laid a piece of paper down in front of me. Had Carolina’s address and yours. Then he laid down a picture of each of you.” He shook his head, the anger bubbling in his eyes. “I never talked about either of you, but he found out.”

  The whispers from the other windows filtered over the dividers, jumbled words and phrases. I wondered if anyone else was speaking with their father or having an even remotely similar conversation.

  “I decked him,” Simington said, a corner of his mouth rising up. “But he just laughed. The message was clear. Do the job or he’d have someone do the job on both of you. We both knew he had me. I went to El Centro the next day and got it done.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone this when you were arrested?” I asked. “Why not tell the cops about Keene?”

  “Because I knew if I dragged him in, he’d have someone on the outside get to you and Carolina,” he said. “Only way to protect you was to keep my mouth shut and take what came my way. And as I’ve already told you,” he said, angling toward the window, “I’m alright with all of it. I’m not here just because of what I did for Keene. This is my reward for a lifetime of work.”

  I didn’t know what to think of him. What he’d done was despicable. There was no way to dress it up. And, yet, because I was essentially part of the excuse for his actions, I felt there was something oddly honorable about his story. He’d chosen me and I’d gone a lifetime thinking he’d never done that. It was both comforting and disconcerting.


  “So you never contested your sentence because you knew it might bring Keene’s involvement to light?” I said.

  He nodded. “First time Darcy came here, took me about two minutes to realize that if I gave her anything, she’d dig it out. She wasn’t going to go through the motions. She actually thought she could overturn the conviction.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Giving her your name was a way to pacify her. I didn’t figure on you getting involved. I just assumed that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me and would send her on her way.”

  Remembering Darcy in the ocean that day we met, I knew sending her on her way was exactly what I should have done. She’d still be alive, and I wouldn’t have been sitting in San Quentin with a man who was taking a power saw to my life.

  “I swear, I thought Keene would either be dead or you wouldn’t be able to find him. Guy has to have about a million enemies and I thought something or someone would’ve gotten to him by now,” Simington said. “It was a stupid mistake on my part. I’m sorry.”

  “Am I right in thinking he killed Darcy?” I asked.

  “Yeah. He must’ve gotten wind of her taking on my case. I’m sure he keeps an eye on me, waiting for them to strap me in.”

  I was unnerved by the way he talked about his own death with such detachment.

  “I’m taking him down, then,” I said.

  Simington shook his head. “Not worth it, Noah. She’s gone, and that’s too bad. But it’s my fault because I started this chain reaction. It’s not your problem to solve.” His eyes hardened. “Best thing you can do is to step away from this now. It’s what’s best for you and your mother.”

  It may have been what was best for everyone, but I didn’t care. Keene had killed Darcy and dumped her in my apartment. Maybe he hadn’t killed Vasquez and Tenayo, but he’d been a part of it.

  “Someone has to fight for Darcy,” I said. “I’m taking him down.”

  “There’s only one way to take him down, Noah,” Simington said.

  “What’s that?”

  Simington leaned closer to the window, the smudges and fingerprints distorting his face. “Kill him.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I set Simington’s advice aside for the moment. “You need a new lawyer.”

  “No,” Simington said, shaking his head. “I don’t. I’m fine.”

  “This kind of information could change your sentence,” I said.

  “We already went through that. I did what I did, I’m going to take the punishment, and I’m alright with it.”

  He spoke as though he were serving a week-long detention rather than being executed. No matter how I felt about him, that didn’t make sense to me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you so comfortable with dying?”

  Chair legs scraped the floor on the other side of the room, echoing off the walls. We stared at each other for a few moments. I wasn’t going to say anything until he answered the question.

  “You’re a good guy, aren’t you, Noah?” he finally said.

  I shrugged, not knowing how to answer.

  “No, you are,” he said, smiling. “I can tell. The fact that you’re here, the fact that you found Keene, and the fact that you want justice for what happened to Darcy all tell me that.”

  I adjusted how I was sitting in the chair, the seat back suddenly feeling too hard.

  “And I know what Carolina’s like,” he continued. “Your mother, I screwed that up, okay? I had a chance to actually have a decent life with her and I shot it all to hell. She was one of the few good things I ever ran across and like always, I fucked it up. She has her faults, but bottom line, she’s a good person. It’s natural that she would’ve passed that on to you.”

  That was difficult to hear. I chose to think that my personality traits evolved in a vacuum instead of having been passed down from people I was embarrassed by.

  Simington pointed his index finger at his chest. “I’m not a good person. I’ve never been a good person. My parents were not good people, so it came easily for me.”

  I wondered about the grandparents I’d never known. “Are they still alive?”

  “No, and the world is better for it,” he said. “My old man died when I was fifteen. Shot in the chest during a burglary. And my mother passed on about ten years ago. Heart attack. All the stress of lying and stealing from people finally caught up to her.” He paused. “You are better off never having met them.”

  My genetic hit streak continued.

  “I have never wanted to be a good person,” he said. “It never occurred to me. I didn’t mind hurting people if it got me what I needed. I was looking out for myself, and fuck the rest of the world.”

  He pointed the index finger at me now. “You care that Darcy was killed. Even in here, with the chance to tell you that it matters to me, I can’t. Because it doesn’t. I’m sorry she’s dead, but it doesn’t affect me. If I were on the outside, her death would be about as important to me as the weather.”

  I leaned forward, my elbows resting on my knees.

  “But when I killed those two men in the desert, I knew I was done,” Simington said. “I’d crossed my own pathetic line. I hated myself for doing it. And I knew I couldn’t change myself. I’m too lazy. There wouldn’t be enough in it for me to do that.” He hesitated, his eyes staring right through me. “I am in the best place for me, headed toward what is the best thing for me. Staying here and accepting my fate is the only good thing I will ever do.”

  He spoke with such conviction, I knew his words weren’t a ploy to garner sympathy. He’d arrived at a truth in his life, no matter how brutal it seemed to the outside world. Even with my emotions twisted into an impossible knot, I knew it wasn’t my place to talk him out of it.

  “I’m serious, Noah,” he said. “This isn’t your fight. It’s not worth it. You need to stay away from Keene.” I stood. “I appreciate the warning.”

  Irritation coiled in his face. “Did you hear anything I said?” “Yeah. I heard it all.”

  “Then drop this. All of this. Darcy, me, and Keene. Let it go today.” He stared at me through the window. “Go back to your life. Do the right thing.”

  I walked out of San Quentin, but I had no idea what the right thing was.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Detective Ken Kenney held out a stick of gum outside San Quentin.

  “No thanks,” I said, trying to brush past him.

  He stepped just close enough to slow me down so he could walk with me. He shoved the gum into his mouth. “Been a lot of your father’s old friends checking in on him lately.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s had a lot of visitors in the last day or so,” he said. “How is he?”

  I wondered if Kenney slept in the parking lot. “He’s wonderful.” “His time is slowly eroding,” he said. “Certainly that is affecting him.”

  “Go ask him yourself.”

  He laughed, but it was hollow and jagged. “Next time I see him, it’ll be only to make sure he’s no longer breathing.”

  “Good to have something to hold onto,” I said as we reached my rental car.

  “Perhaps then I’ll be able to let go.” Kenney cleared his throat. “Heard about Ms. Gill. I’m sorry.” “I’ll bet.”

  “Regardless of my wishes for your father, I did not want to see anyone else hurt by their involvement with him.” He pulled the gum out of his mouth and tossed it away. “She told you why I’m hanging around, correct?”

  “She did.”

  “You ask him? About my nephew?” I looked away and shook my head. “You should. Be interesting to see what he says.”

  I felt caught in the middle, but I wasn’t sure why. Simington may have been my father, but it was a title on a piece of paper and nothing else. Yet, when Kenney spoke to me, I felt defensive.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He stared at me for a moment, then leaned against the passenger door of the ren
tal, his arms folded across his chest. “Jacob was a screw-up.”

  “Your nephew?”

  He nodded. “My sister had a helluva time with him. Couldn’t get him pointed down the right road. He was just determined to go the wrong way. But that doesn’t make it any easier, you know?”

  I did.

  “As clichéd as it sounds, Jacob fell in with the wrong crowd,” Kenney said, his voice not as confident as it had been before. “Kept getting nicked here and there. Some theft, an assault, that sort of stuff. Not big time, but it was building.” He ran a hand across his jaw. “Started doing some work for a guy who runs a backroom operation.”

  “Gambling?”

  “Yeah. Poker games, horses, sports. The guy’s been doing it forever, and to be honest, so are a lot of others. It’s not a high priority to quash it all.”

  I believed that.

  “Jacob stole from the guy. Five large,” Kenney said, sounding like he’d bit into something that tasted awful. “Stupid, stupid move.”

  The story fell into place. “And the guy hired Simington to punish him,” I said.

  Kenney nodded. “Sure. It’s what they do. Let anybody steal from you and your credibility with your bettors goes to shit. He had to take care of Jacob.”

  I shivered against the breeze that brushed across the parking lot.

  “Simington was a pro. He came in and did what he was paid to do.” He glanced at me. “He did it, Mr. Braddock. There is no doubt. He covered his tracks, and we couldn’t get him. But he killed Jacob.”

  We let that hang between us.

  “Jacob was not a good kid. But he was my nephew, and I don’t believe anyone deserves to die like that,” he said. “That’s why I am preoccupied with your father.”

  It was like another kick to the shins.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”