Black Jack Point

by Jeff Abbott

  Maybe Ben still breathed. She’d find him if he did. And if he didn’t, she’d find the bastards who’d killed him.

  She fell asleep.

  27

  THE ELDERLY COUPLE had lived near Encina Pass for nearly seventy years, close to the bay, in an old, small house made of heavy cypress. When the knock came on the door both were nearly asleep, having dozed off during a particularly boring cable movie. The old woman nearly jumped out of her skin with fright, touched the rollers in her hair in case one had worked loose. The old man rose from his recliner, and answered the door.

  The young man standing on the front stoop was sopping wet, with a heavy bruise marring his nose and cheekbones, like he’d been in a crash, smelling of the bay, shivering in the night heat, a broken pair of handcuffs dangling from his wrist. One finger was purpled, clearly broken.

  “Could you—could you please call the police?” the young man stammered. “My name is Ben Vaughn and I was kidnapped by some crazy people. I think they killed my girlfriend.”

  Alex Black returned to his motel room Friday night, tired, frazzled, in need of a shower. He stood in the shower’s hot spray for nearly twenty minutes until the water began to cool. He scrubbed soap hard into his skin and scalp until his body tingled. Then he toweled off with a vengeance, put on shorts and a T-shirt.

  His cell phone rang. He picked it up, glanced at the readout. His father, calling from south Florida. At least it wasn’t that idiot Stoney, him he couldn’t deal with any more tonight.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, son, how are you?” Big Bert’s voice was dry with cancer, but optimistic, like always.

  “You chasing the ladies tonight? Taking a breather to call me?” It was an old game between them, pretending an active romantic life was barreling ahead at full steam. Suddenly Alex’s throat felt thick.

  “I chase ’em but they run faster’n me these days.” A pause. “Sure would like to see you soon.”

  “Probably another few days,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.”

  “Dig keeping you busy?”

  “Client’s a big pain, but it’s okay.”

  A dry click in his father’s throat. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Well, not as interesting as gold,” Alex said, trying to cheer the old man up.

  “What you getting?” Big Bert asked.

  “Pottery shards, bones, arrowheads.”

  “Not much junk to keep you from your old man.”

  Alex didn’t like his tone. Not telling something, skirting an issue. “You feeling okay?”

  His father gave a soft burp and Alex figured one of Big Bert’s friends had sneaked him beer into the hospice again. “Don’t you get thrown out of All Saints, having a party.”

  “That was from a Pepsi, thank you kindly.”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling okay,” Alex said.

  “I never said I was.”

  “Well. Okay. I got to go, Dad. I got an early, early morning.”

  “Yeah. You got pottery shards calling your name.”

  “Okay then. I’m gonna be there soon. Promise.”

  “Don’t take too long.”

  What did that mean? “Dad. Are you worse?”

  “I just want to see you soon. Good-bye, son. I love you.”

  “Yeah, back at you.” He did not want to think of his father wasting away in a hospice bed, the cancer he’d ignored for too long seeping through his body like rot. Big Bert belonged on a boat, diving for galleon treasure, hauling up lost Spanish coins. But always just to have Florida bureaucrats snatch them out of his hands. Bureaucrats had ruined him slowly with promises while breaking him on the rack of their antiquity laws. Here, go get yourself an ice cream, Big Bert would say to Alex as a little boy, handing him a piece of eight from 1690 or a doubloon from 1712. Knock yourself out with a double scoop. Funny, yes, but then the state government would take most of the gold, the IRS would sniff around Big Bert’s boat, squatters would try to maneuver their boats over his dive spots, the treasure would be nibbled away by a thousand grasping hands more clever than good-natured Big Bert’s.

  His way was better, Alex knew, but he didn’t want to discuss it with Big Bert. Let his father think he still scrabbled through the loam for pottery and beads and junk. He’d sell much of the treasure quick. He’d go to that hospice—such a nice crisp word for a death place—grab Big Bert, fly off to Costa Rica. Let him die in blue splendor under a bright, forgiving sun. Die happy.

  Every day you waste with Stoney is a day you don’t have with your dad. Tomorrow he’d get it sorted out. Find the Eye, eliminate Stoney. Screw Stoney’s threats of posthumous exposure. He was tired of this game. He needed his money, he needed it now. He’d made new identities before, he could do it again. No one in Costa Rica would bother him. And he could stay there forever.

  Alex clicked on the television, waited for the ten o’clock news out of Corpus Christi. First story was a dramatic hostage standoff at a church in Dallas, two people killed. Then the news was all Port Leo: a boat wreck in St. Leo Bay, a Port Leo police officer rescued from out in the Gulf, Ben Vaughn’s face on the screen as a kidnapping victim. Then Stoney’s face, also described as possibly missing. At the least the authorities wanted to ensure he was well, considering his brother had been kidnapped.

  Claudia Salazar was alive. But there were no other details offered, no mention of a connection to the deaths at Black Jack Point. At the end of the newscast the pearl-toothed anchor broke in to say that Ben Vaughn had been found in Encina Pass, alive and well, no details yet on his missing brother, financier Stoney Vaughn.

  He picked up his cell phone, called Stoney at the fishing cottage.

  “Your brother’s alive,” Alex said. “Congratulations.”

  “I just saw on the news.” Stoney’s voice sounded a little funny. Like he was surprised to hear from him. “Where you at?”

  He suddenly didn’t like the question. “Just around. Keeping a close eye on you.”

  “So how long do I need to lie low? I can’t stay holed up here forever.”

  “I suppose that depends on what your brother says,” Alex said. “He accuses you of anything, you’re screwed.”

  “Ben would never do that to me.”

  “You just screwed him over royally, Stoney. You might have lost that old brotherly love.”

  “Ben’s not like that.”

  “You mean he’s a better person than you,” Alex said. “I think you want to stay there a couple more days, Stoney. Let them get good and worried about you. Maybe we’ll make a fake ransom demand to your brother, just for show. Then you can crop up, no worse for wear.” Yeah, right, dream on. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Stay low.”

  “I will.”

  Alex got up, packed his bag. He liked knowing where Stoney was but didn’t like Stoney knowing where he was. He checked out of the Sandspot, drove across town to a smaller motel, the Surfside—did every coastal hotel have to have an S in the title?—checked in, got settled.

  On the way over Alex didn’t notice the little Chevy, gold and violet and amber crystals dangling from the rearview mirror, following him.

  28

  WHIT AWOKE EARLY Saturday morning, Lucy shaking his shoulder. She still hadn’t been home when he returned from the hospital, but he was exhausted. So he ate a sandwich, curled in under the sheets, felt her arrive next to him and spoon into him, felt her kiss on the back of his neck, and fell back asleep.

  “Phone call,” she whispered into his ear. He hadn’t even heard the phone ring. “Guy sounds like he’s squeezing coal into diamonds using his ass.”

  Whit picked up the phone, listened, said, “Uh-huh” and “Okay” a couple of times, hung up, rolled under the covers.

  “Who was that?”

  “The FBI.”

  “The FBI?” Lucy’s voice rose an octave.

  “Hoover doesn’t run it anymore. You don’t have to be afraid.” He wriggled his face deeper into the pillow. “They want to
talk to me about Stoney Vaughn. I guess I really was one of the last to see him before he vanished, or took off, or whatever.” He told her a highly abbreviated—and edited—version of Claudia’s kidnapping. He sighed as she ran her hand along his back.

  “What do they think happened to this guy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the kidnappers that took his brother went after him.” He didn’t want to talk about Danny Laffite or Gooch’s trip or any of the rest of it with her. Lucy couldn’t keep her mouth shut, he thought, and all of it might upset her needlessly. He rolled over onto his back.

  “So was this Stoney guy involved in Patch’s murder or what, Whit?” She was whispering into his ear, running a hand along the flat of his belly. “I thought it was Jimmy Bird.”

  “Stoney knew your uncle. That was the only reason I went to see him. His brother’s kidnapping, it may have nothing to do with your uncle’s death.”

  She ran fingernails along his ribs; he loved that. He wriggled and smiled. “No time, babe. I got to get showered for the Feds.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He opened an eye, looked at her. “You okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Tired.”

  “Your errands took a long time.”

  “No, I got back and you were gone. So I ate a quick dinner and then went back over to my apartment, to get some fresh clothes.”

  “Okay.” He got up from the bed, started up the shower.

  “Whit?” Lucy stood in the doorway, in a T-shirt and thin little white panties.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “You’re doing an inquest, what, next week?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Why, if it was Jimmy Bird? He’s dead.”

  “It’s just a formality, I guess. And maybe by Tuesday we’ll know more. But I don’t think he acted alone. That might be where David and I differ.”

  “David’s the cop, though, hon.”

  “That he is.” Whit shucked his boxers, stepped into the hot spray. “An inquest is just a format for determining if one person caused the death of the other. If I put it on Jimmy, it still doesn’t explain the why of what happened.”

  She kept standing in the bathroom, watching him shower.

  “You find any insurance on those coins?” he asked.

  “I haven’t had time to look,” she said, and as he shampooed, he heard a brief flash of anger in her voice. “Maybe they weren’t Patch’s. I really don’t know. Could I look at the coins?”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”

  “Conflict is bad for your aura, Whit. You’re basically a peaceable guy. I get a bad vibe from you as long as this investigation is going on.”

  Whit rinsed his hair.

  “You’re not saying anything smart back to me,” Lucy said.

  “You said conflict was bad for me, baby.”

  “I know you don’t believe in my psychic powers. That’s okay. You’re scientific in nature and we don’t have the imaging technologies to show auras like I wish we did. You could get it done like getting a CAT scan.”

  “Lucy, if you say you’re psychic, I believe you. Because I love you. End of story.”

  She said nothing and he finished washing and when he turned off the water she was standing there, sobbing quietly.

  “Baby,” he said.

  “I’m such a big fake. I don’t see auras. I don’t see the future. I get hunches, like any other person, and that’s it.”

  “Well, I never get a hunch, so you’re ahead of me.”

  “But I’m a fake. How can you love a fake? I don’t say it’s the Intuitive Hunch Hotline.” She pulled toilet paper off the roll, dabbed her eyes, blew her nose.

  “Lucy.” Whit wrapped a towel around his waist. “You’re not a fake. You’re like, well, a counselor without a license. Like I’m a judge without a law degree.”

  “You were elected. You don’t need one.”

  “People elect to call you, get a little tarot, get a little advice.” He pulled her close, gave her a warm peck on the mouth.

  “I want to get out of the hotline business,” she said. “I want to make you proud.”

  “I’m proud of you,” he said. “Love you just as you are.”

  “You’re not proud of me, Whit,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “No.”

  “Trust me, I am,” he said, toweling off, rummaging in the little duffel bag he’d brought. He found boxers, stepped into them, found a shirt, electric-yellow with sashaying red crabs dancing across it. Pulled on khakis and stepped into his sandals.

  “Don’t wear that to meet the FBI,” she said. “Wear a suit.”

  “You’re putting me in a crabby mood,” he said with a smile.

  “Whit. Don’t joke. I’m serious. I don’t want to be an embarrassment to you.”

  “Is this about Suzanne?”

  “No. Me.”

  “Whatever you want to do, I’ll support. You want to keep the psychic hotline? Great. You don’t want to do it anymore? Great. But you could never be an embarrassment to me.” He waved the shirt in front of her, slipped it on, began to button it. “Way more likely I’ll embarrass you.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” Lucy said quietly.

  They kept him waiting twenty minutes, and as far as he could see—from the chair in Stoney Vaughn’s expansive living room—the two federal agents were just sitting and talking, drinking Stoney Vaughn’s coffee and not offering him a cup, making incessant short calls on their cell phones. He wondered—no, he knew. David had already talked to these men, painted an unkind picture of Whit, and that was why he was thumb-twiddling.

  When one started a refill Whit got up and stood in the kitchen. “Excuse me. Saturday may be your day to suck down hazelnut, but I have work to do. Either y’all talk to me now or make an appointment with my office.”

  They both looked at him like he had a big streak of piss down his pants but one smiled and the other one pulled out a chair at Stoney Vaughn’s kitchen table. Whit thought maybe Lucy was right that he should have worn the suit, and that made him even madder. But he sat.

  They both had G names: Grimes and Gordell. Whit immediately dubbed them the G Men. Grimes was muscular and spare, all throat and shoulders and arm muscles with skin the color of teak. Gordell was chunkier, not fat, wide-set and blocky. Grimes had a Southern drawl; Gordell spoke with the nasal clip of New England. The G Men wore suits, nice, summer-weight blends, still far too hot for the Texas coast in July. Whit’s shirt seemed to irritate Agent Gordell like a thumbtack in his seat; he kept glancing at it in disbelief.

  “Judge Mosley,” Grimes said in his slow, friendly cadence, “you visited Mr. Vaughn yesterday?”

  They always had to waste time asking what they already knew. “Yes. In conducting an inquest into a double homicide this past week I found that there was a slight connection between Stoney Vaughn and one of the victims. I wanted to ask Mr. Vaughn about it, so I came out here yesterday morning about eight-thirty. Mr. Vaughn looked like death warmed over, like he’d slept in his clothes, and I could smell whiskey on him. His lip looked split.”

  “Like maybe he’d had a stressful evening?”

  “He certainly didn’t mention his brother and Claudia had been kidnapped. He knew, didn’t he?”

  “We’re not at liberty to discuss that. Judge.” Grimes added the title with an embarrassed smile, like it was an afterthought. Like they even knew for sure.

  “Claudia Salazar’s an old friend of mine. We work homicides together. I wouldn’t take it well if Stoney knew she was in danger and didn’t help her.”

  The G Men smiled politely. What he took well mattered not a bit.

  “But there had already been a suspect identified in this double homicide, right?” Gordell said. “A suicide.”

  “As coroner, I haven’t officially ruled that death a suicide yet,” Whit said.

  “And you just decided, what, the sheriff’s office was wrong and you�
��d keep pressing other angles?” Gordell said. “A little presumptuous, wouldn’t you say?”

  David must have poured on the charm. “I don’t believe I have to justify my actions to you, sir,” Whit said politely.

  “Excuse me?” Gordell said. Grimes glanced up from jotting on a legal pad, his face blank.

  “Excuse me… Your Honor,” Whit corrected. He smiled.

  “Your Honor,” Gordell amended. He didn’t look repentant for one second. “No offense meant.”

  “Meant. Taken. Whatever,” Whit said. “If I feel additional information is warranted for an inquest, I go get that information.”

  “You’re not a lawyer, are you? I mean, you’re not one of those judges that’s required to be formally trained in the law,” Gordell said with polite snideness.

  “No, I’m not a lawyer. I’m an elected official.”

  An unpleasant light glinted in the back of Gordell’s eyes. “I’m sure the voters might take offense at you not cooperating with the FBI.”

  “How have I not cooperated?”

  “Cocky. You don’t see that much in politicians,” Gordell said.

  “Jim,” Grimes said, a little weary.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Whit said.

  “Let’s not get into a turf war, Judge Mosley. You’ll lose and lose badly. We ask the questions. You answer them.”

  Whit counted to ten. “It’s good I came here yesterday, as I can tell you Stoney Vaughn was alive and well then. If he’s been kidnapped since then, or he’s run off, at least I’ve narrowed the time frame considerably for you.”

  “Thank you,” Grimes said.

  “What I’d like to know is why,” Whit said.

  “Why what?” Gordell said.

  “Why were Ben and Claudia kidnapped?”

  “Mr. Vaughn is a wealthy man.”

  “Mr. Stoney Vaughn is. Mr. Ben Vaughn isn’t.”

  “They thought Stoney was aboard.”

  “Why did they think that? They knew his schedule?”