by Nick Thacker
And this is all my fault, I thought.
“First,” I said, “this is my fault. My problem. You don’t have to —”
“I’m doing whatever it takes to get her back, Dixon. Just try and —”
“I’m not going to try and stop you, Joey,” I shot back. “I’m just going to say this because it’s true, and I need to say it.”
“Okay, go ahead then.”
“This is my fault. Okay? Mine. My fault, my problem. Don’t forget that. Whatever we’re getting into, it’s my fault.”
He nodded, then looked out over the water.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, Dixon,” he said.
I could tell he wasn’t done, and I could tell he wanted to scream. I wanted him to; hell, I wanted to. But he wasn’t that sort of guy, and neither was I. He needed to vent, to get out some frustration, and the best way for both of us to do that was to start planning our attack. Figure out our next move, then start moving.
He also needed to figure out what he was feeling about Shalice.
She wasn’t in immediate danger, but I hadn’t yet told him why they’d taken her. I remembered the conversation, but it was likely Joey had no idea what they wanted with her.
“Joey,” I said. “You good?”
He nodded. “I guess.”
“We need to talk. Make a plan.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And I need to tell you why they took her.”
He whirled around and glared at me. “They took her because she was here, Mason. Because we’re a mess, and she walked right into it.”
I shook my head. “No, man. That’s not it. I’m a mess, and you’re part of that. And yes, she was in the wrong place at the very wrong time, but it’s not her fault, or yours.”
“I know that, Dixon. Get to the point.”
“Okay, fine. The point is this: she was taken as collateral.”
“She’s a hostage, Dixon.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head again. “No, she’s not. I mean, yes, in a way, but she’s not in any immediate danger. They’re not going to use her to negotiate with us.”
“How do you figure that?” Joey asked.
“Because they’ve already negotiated. Down below, in the room.”
He waited for my explanation.
“They want their boss kept alive. They needed assurance that he would be, so they came here. To me. Not to you, not to Shalice. Like I said, she was just in the wrong —”
“Doesn’t matter, Dixon,” he said. His eyes were wide, nearly bugging out of his head, and I could tell I was about to lose him. “They took her. You got that? It doesn’t matter why, or for what reason — she’s gone.”
“It does matter,” I said, trying as hard as possible to keep my voice calm. “It matters because as long as their boss doesn’t die, she stays alive.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “And you have any idea who their boss is?”
I nodded. “I do,” I said softly. “It’s Rockford Elizondo.”
15
WE’D MADE IT BACK TO the dock and parted ways in record time. Joey had nothing to say, and I had nothing to offer that would make our situation any better. So the entire ride was silent, punctuated only by the squawking seagulls following us in to shore and then the other yachters as they disembarked from whatever excursion they’d been enjoying.
Our separate cars were waiting, and Joey headed to his without saying goodbye. I knew he was going back to the bar, to clean up for tomorrow. He’d probably make his way through a small bottle of something heavy as well, but I couldn’t fault him for that.
I went back to my own apartment, still shaken and still unsure of what my next move should be. Whatever it was, Joey was in on it. He would grieve for a day, maybe a little longer, then he’d be ready for action.
He’d be ready for revenge.
Joey wasn’t a hothead, but he wasn’t a completely cool, levelheaded guy either when the shit hit the fan. He was like me in that way — ready and willing to rush in and get things done, no matter the consequences.
But Joey was no good to me or Shalice dead, so I needed to figure out how to keep him from doing anything rash. I hated planning — it always seemed like a pointless task, as plans were guaranteed to change midstream, no matter how well thought-out.
Joey was typically all for a solid plan, but I knew that since he had more at stake now than ever before he’d be more of a loose cannon.
I was a loose cannon, and we only needed one cannon.
Whatever I could do to reign him in was a good idea.
But, also like me, Joey was stubborn. Between a background in the Navy and an adult life spent figuring things out for himself, Joey would be hard-nosed about any sort of ‘backseat’ plan for him I could come up with.
If I was playing offense, he’d refuse to play defense.
Which meant I needed to call in some heavy-hitters. If I could make Joey think we were going on the attack, yet have someone besides us running point, it left room for us to fall back and help with some behind-the-scenes stuff. Support, recon, whatever they might need.
I picked up my archaic cellphone and dialed the number. It was well after normal business hours, but the person I was calling didn’t maintain normal business hours. Or, for that matter, conduct normal business.
It rang, twice, before the man on the other end answered. “Dixon?”
“Hey, Truman.”
“Shit, man,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. It had already been too long since I’d seen him last — recovering from a close encounter back with Hannah. He and his team at the FBI had spent a night on the Wassamassaw as a gift for helping me out, and I’d told Truman then that we needed to hang out more often.
But, as it turned out, neither of us was any good at keeping in touch. It had been since he’d walked off the boat that next morning that we’d last spoken.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry — I’m… I’m bad about this stuff.”
“No worries,” he said. “Good to hear your voice. What’s up?”
Truman probably already knew that I wouldn’t call to set up a time to ‘hang out,’ and I certainly wouldn’t do it on a weeknight. He also probably knew that from the sound of my voice.
“There’s… there’s a situation,” I said.
“You got to be kidding me,” Truman said. “Again?”
“Truman, I need your help.”
I heard him sigh, then he went silent.
“I’m after someone. He killed my old man, and someone wants me to retaliate. There’s a finder’s fee.”
Another sigh, but this time Truman’s voice picked back up afterward. “Look, Mason,” he said. “Besides the very obvious and blatant illegalities here, this is your business. Right?”
He wasn’t talking about my bar.
“Right, yeah. But —”
“But now you’re in over your head.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Not surprised, Dixon. And may I remind you, considering what you’re about to tell me, that I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation? The government, Mason.”
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take that as a ‘be careful what you’re about to say’ or a ‘don’t say it at all,’ so I did what I thought best.
I said it.
“Truman, listen. Someone else is in the game, and they want assurance that I won’t move on their boss.”
“Christ, Dixon. They’ve got something on you, then?”
“Both sides have something on me.”
“Yeah?” Truman asked. “What’s that?”
“My bar on side.”
“Great. That’s just great —”
“And Joey’s girlfriend on the other.”
“What?” Truman’s voice rose in pitch and volume through the tinny speaker.
“Yeah,” I said. “I told you, I’m in —”
“It’s not you who’s in it, Dixon. Hell, this is your life, pal.
It ain’t the first scrape you’ve been in, and — against your better judgement — it probably won’t be your last. It’s not you who’s in trouble, pal, it’s this girl. And Joey.”
It was my turn to sigh, and I made it a good long one. I wasn’t one for feeling sorry for myself, but at the moment I couldn’t help it. “I — I know.”
“Mason, I can’t help you.”
“I know you can’t, I just —”
“Just what, Dixon? You thought that by calling me and spilling it all over the phone you’d bind me to some agreement? Some ‘rule’ about negligence that would force my hand?”
I wasn’t prepared to be berated, but I figured after he’d started that it was probably his first reaction. If the tables were turned, I guess I’d have done the same thing.
“That’s the thing with you, Mason,” Truman continued. “You don’t think there are consequences for what you do.”
I was started to get worked up, pissed even, and I certainly had better things to do.
“Stop, Truman. Just stop. I called because I wanted your advice —”
“You want my advice?” Truman said, still nearly yelling into his cellphone. “My advice is the same as it always is. The same as it always has been. Get. Away. Run away from this madness, and stop acting like a vigilante idiot.”
“I’m not a vigilante idiot —”
“Save it, Dixon,” he said. “You and I both know that what you do is, generally, a good thing. It’s dangerous as hell and I have no idea how you haven’t left a wave of innocent dead people behind you, but I guarantee you that it is not skill. It’s luck, and you’re a lucky son-of-a-bitch, but that luck has changed. It’s changed, Mason, and you just had your last battle.”
“Truman, I don’t need this right —”
“No shit you don’t need this right now, but you called anyway. What’d you think would happen? I’d drop everything and come running? That I didn’t have enough on my plate already? I’m neck-deep in a counterfeit operation in Puerto Rico, and we can’t even decide on jurisdiction, Dixon.”
He stopped to breathe, but I knew he was far from done.
“Besides all that, what do you expect me to do? This is all an illegal operation, no matter how you crack it. I come in, guns blazing, take out the bad guys, you’re going to jail. For a long time. There’s no way to ‘report that away,’ Dixon. There’s no fudging those numbers.”
“I know that, Truman. I’m just trying to see what you would do.”
“I would go to the police.”
“There’s no way in hell I’m doing that.”
“I know. But you asked me what I would do. This isn’t something you can fix on your own, Dixon. You got yourself into this mess, no matter how you choose to see things. The police can’t help you either, but at least you remove some of the liability from your own head.”
“I’m not going to the police.”
Truman breathed in and out again, a short string of sighs, then got back on the phone. “I can’t help you, Dixon. I wish I could, but I can’t. I can’t give you information because I don’t have it, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. I’d be sucked into this mess, and I will not be sucked in.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I know. I’m not asking you to, either. For the record. I don’t want your hands getting dirty, trust me. I just — I just wish…”
“I know, Dixon. It’s like when you’re a kid in school and you get in trouble, you want your best friend to be there with you, because getting in trouble alone sucks.”
“Yeah,” I said again. “That’s pretty much it.”
“Well I may be the closest thing to a best friend you have, Dixon, but I’m not getting in trouble with you on this one.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it.”
“Listen, Dixon,” Truman said. “I really wish there was something I can do, but it’s not possible. You get out of this mess, and we’ll get a beer. Until then, I’d suggest you pour yourself a stiff drink, get on that fancy boat of yours, and point it toward Africa and don’t stop until you get there.”
“You got it, Truman,” I said. “Thanks.”
He hung up without saying anything more, and I knew he was sincere. He wasn’t available, and no matter how much I wanted to try to drag him in, I couldn’t.
This is my mess, I thought. And I have to clean it up.
16
THE BAR WAS DIFFERENT THE next morning, even though I knew it was exactly the same. It was the same place I’d started, the same place I’d renovated, and the same place Joey and I had served countless beers and poured countless old fashioneds.
Yet it was different.
There was a haze almost, something in the air. Hanging there, like dead weight.
Joey was silent, still, and I wasn’t trying to get him to talk. He was thinking, and I didn’t need to ask him about what.
I was thinking too, and even though I knew there was no way I could figure it all out, not thinking wasn’t going to make the clock stop. We had until Sunday to find this guy, Rockford Elizondo, and kill him.
Or not kill him.
Depending on which side I decided we were on.
My dad was dead, apparently killed by this man. People who wanted Elizondo dead were threatening me with my bar, holding it out over me to get me to off him. They were even offering to pay me a lot of money to do it.
On the other hand, Elizondo’s men wanted to make sure I didn’t move on him. To enforce that, they were threatening at least Shalice’s life, and probably mine and Joey’s as well.
They could try to kill me all they wanted, but there was nothing I could do to protect Shalice from here.
So I was in a bit of a conundrum. A rock and a hard place. Up shit creek without —
“Yo,” Joey said.
I looked over. “What’s up. You okay? You need any —”
“I’m fine, Mason,” he said. “Just got off the phone with our distributor.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Which one?”
“The big one in Charleston.”
We worked with about five main distributors, all of whom offered something we liked at the right price. As usual, no one offered everything at a reasonable price, so one of the many things Joey and I split duties on was ordering and restocking the liquors behind the bar from our approved vendors list.
The vendor we did the most business with in Charleston was Jonathan Frey, a somewhat naive yet likable chap who gave us a great deal on rum and other Caribbean imports — bitters, liqueurs, fruits, that sort of thing.
“What’d he say?” I asked. Joey was obviously trying to keep his mind off the obvious, at least until he was ready to move and make a plan, and he’d chosen to do so by throwing himself into his day job. I was fine with that, even though I knew we were running out of time.
“Normal delivery for the smaller stuff,” he said. “Bitters and pineapples are coming up tomorrow, but the rum’s a bit behind.”
“Why’s that?”
“Storms, I guess,” Joey said. “Lots of big distributors coming up from the Caribbean this weekend, apparently. Trying to unload before the storm hits, so the harbor will be packed with them. He said it’ll be Sunday before the ship arrives. ”
“Before the…”
“Ship arrives,” Joey said. “Yeah.” Then he paused, looked at me. “Why?”
“Before the ship arrives?”
“Yes, Mason, that’s what I said. What of it?”
I thought back to the encounter I’d had with the first guys who’d brought me in. Jeff and his two cohorts. They’d told me the man’s name — Rockford Elizondo — but not much else that was useful. They’d told me that he was somewhere in Charleston, and what he did for a living.
Shipping.
He was in the shipping business.
“Joey, I think one of those is our ship.”
Joey frowned. “What are you talking about?”
It was all starting to make sense now. I wasn’t ju
st pulled into this because my dad was killed by Elizondo, a rich shipper from Charleston. It wasn’t even because I was the kind of guy who could take out Elizondo without people knowing about it.
They had targeted me because, without knowing it, I had become deeply embroiled in their plan.
Elizondo was a shipper, and I had a feeling I knew what he was shipping.
“Joey, pull up something about Elizondo.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it, Joey.”
“He’s — he’s not exactly… I mean, I already have.”
“You have?”
“Well sure, boss. I came in and did it last night, after…”
Typical of Joey. He was already moving, making a plan. I had underestimated him, assumed he’d needed to rest, to grieve. But he’d been hard at work already.
“You didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing useful. A LinkedIn profile that hasn’t been —”
“A what?”
Joey smiled. “LinkedIn. It’s like Facebook for —”
“What’s Facebook again? Is that the networking site? Like for businesspeople?”
“No,” Joey said. “You’re thinking of LinkedIn.”
“Oh,” I said, thoroughly confused. “So what’s Facebook?”
“It's like — you know what? Never mind. Back to Elizondo.”
“Right, okay sure.” I was moving chairs around and sweeping beneath tables, so it was good just to have Joey talking, if only to drown out the monotony.
And, I had to admit, it was good to hear his voice again.
“So he’s got an old profile, if it’s even him, and then a page on the shipping company’s website, but I have a feeling it’s outdated.”
“Why do you have that feeling?” I asked.
“Because there was a note at the top of the page that says ‘last updated September 14, 1998.’
“1998?” I asked, incredulously. “I didn’t even know the Internet was around back then.”
“I’m surprised you know it’s around now,” Joey responded.
I shot him a Clint Eastwood stare, then turned back to the broom.
“So there’s nothing useful online,” I said. “Yet the guys in Charleston — and the guys from the boat last night — seemed to assume I knew exactly who Elizondo was.”